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On A Friday in November 1991, 
just before they became 
Radiohead: (from left)Thom Yorke, 
Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, 
Jonny Greenwood, Phil Selway. 








THE COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 





WORDS: TOM DOYLE 


WING 


Now, of course, there is In Rainbows, OK Computer 
and a reputation as weighty as any in modem 
music. Before all that, though, there were brown 
polo-neck jumpers and songs about chickens. 


T hey may be one of music’s most 
visionary outfits, but Radiohead 
are, at heart, a school band. They 
met at the private Abingdon 
School, an imposing, Gothic- 
turreted building situated in the market 
town of the same name, eight miles down 
the River Thames from Oxford. Established 
in 1256, Abingdon has produced its share 
of renowned old boys, including former 
Conservative Party Chairman Francis 
Maude and various ambassadors and 
diplomats, as well as Peep Show comedian 
David Mitchell. 

They began playing together in 1986, 
rehearsing in the school music rooms at the 
end of the week, hence their initial name: 

On A Friday. They all knew one another 
even before forming the band. Older than 
the rest, 18-year-old drummer Phil Selway 
was part of a gang of school bullies who 
had picked on younger students, including 
bookish 16-year-old bass player Colin 
Greenwood and his shy younger brother 
Jonny. Amiable beanpole guitarist Ed 
O’Brien knew that Colin Greenwood’s shirty 
friend - and On A Friday’s future singer 
- Thom Yorke once fancied his sister. The 
first time O’Brien encountered Yorke was 
during a “tense” dress rehearsal for a school 
production of A Midsummer Night’s 
Dream in which O’Brien was acting and 
Yorke was providing the music. 

“Thom and this other fella were 
jamming freeform cod jazz throughout it,” 
O’Brien later recalled. “The director stopped 
the play and shouted up to this scaffold 
tower they were playing on, trying to find 
out what the hell was going on. Thom 
started shouting down, I don’t know what 
the fuck we’re supposed to be playing. 

And this was to a teacher.” 


W hen Thom Yorke wasn’t 
going toe-to-toe with his 
teachers, he could usually 
be found in one of 
Abingdon’s School’s music 
rooms. “It was great,” he recalled. “No one 
came down there. There were these little 
tiny rooms with sound-proofed cubicles. 
That’s where I spent most of my time.” 

Music had been Yorke’s main passion 
since childhood. His parents had given him 
a cheap acoustic guitar at the age of eight 
and soon he began attempting to emulate 
his unlikely idol, poodle-haired Queen 
guitarist Brian May. “I wanted to be him,” 
he admitted. “I went into a guitar lesson and 
I said, I wanna be a pop star.” 

The dreams were more fun than his 
unsettled upbringing. Yorke was bom on 
7 October 1968 in the Northamptonshire 
town of Wellingborough, but his father’s 
job selling chemical equipment had meant 
the family had uprooted to Scotland before 
moving back down to Oxford in 1978. By 
the time he began attending the town’s 
Standlake Primary, he was already on his 
third school. Inevitably, his itinerant 
childhood made it difficult to make friends. 
“There’s a pervading sense of loneliness I’ve 
had since the day I was born,” he admitted. 

It wasn’t helped by bullying. Born with 
his left eyelid closed, he’d undergone five 
operations, the last - in his words - “fucked 
up” by the surgeon, leaving it partly 
paralysed and forcing him to wear an 
eyepatch for a year. When Yorke started 
Abingdon in 1980, his drooping eyelid and 
angular features earned him the cruel 
nickname of “Salamander”. Not that he 
didn’t defend himself. Having been taught 
some boxing moves by his father, he often 
lashed out at his tormentors. H 


Q 65 















































'I WANT NOTHING MORE 
THAN TO BE A STAR/ thom yorke 


B “I never won,” he said. “I was into the 

idea of fighting. I suppose I’m quite an 
aggressive person. I’ve had to calm down 
a bit, otherwise I’d go nuts.” 

Instead, he channelled his energies into 
music. At the age of 10, he formed an 
unnamed duo with another Standlake 
pupil. Setting the template for what was 
to come, his first song wasn’t a fumbling 
ditty about girls. Rather, Yorke penned 
Mushroom Cloud, about the dreadful 
beauty of a nuclear explosion. 

As he grew older, Yorke’s outlook was 
further shaped by his love-hate relationship 
with his hometown and its student 
populace. Despite attending Abingdon as 
a day-boy, his background as the son of a 
salesman placed him firmly on the “town” 
side of Oxford’s “town and gown” divide. 

“Oxford is a place where you have 
a plan and then you go out and you never, 
ever achieve it,” he said. “You just walk 
around in circles. Seeing these fuckers 
[students ]walking around in their 
ballgowns, throwing up on the street, 
being obnoxious to the population... 

They don’t know they’re bom and 
they’re going to run the country. 

It’s scary.” 

His formative years weren’t all grim. 
Just before leaving Abingdon in 1987, 
he received prizes for art and music. 

“It was the first time I’d ever had any 
encouragement,” he remembered. At 
the year’s closing Symposium Revue, 

Yorke appeared onstage performing 
a song - its title long forgotten - solo 
with an acoustic guitar. Schoolmate 
Rick Clark remembered that he “really 
impressed the audience”. 

T hom Yorke and Colin Greenwood 
first bonded at Abingdon over a 
shared love of Joy Division. It was 
the early ’80s, and they would 
go to teenage parties together, 
experimenting with the dubious fashions 
of the day: berets, ruffled shirts, crushed 
velvet suits, even a lick of mascara. For 
a while they played together in a punk- 


influenced band named TNT, with Yorke 
ranting into a microphone taped to a 
broom handle. 

Gradually, the future members of On 
A Friday entered their orbit. Ed O’Brien 
was first, the pair more impressed with his 
striking, Morrissey-esque quiff than his 
skills as a guitarist. The trio began jamming 
along to a clapped-out drum machine 
before O’Brien eventually plucked up the 
courage to enlist the services of the older 
Phil Selway. 

By 1986, the quartet had christened 
themselves On A Friday. Also attending 
their music-room rehearsals was Colin’s 
younger brother Jonny. An introverted 
15-year-old with a thatch of black hair 
and razor-sharp cheekbones, the younger 
Greenwood was a classically trained 
musical prodigy who had taken viola 


lessons as a youngster and could turn his 
hand to any instrument. He was desperate 
to join his big brother’s band, though he 
was too bashful to ask. Instead, he would 
lurk on the fringes of the rehearsal room, 
shyly doodling away on an assortment of 
musical instruments. 

“He’d be like, Look, I can play this ,” 
recalled brother Colin, “and he’d whip out 
another instrument.” 

The younger Greenwood was eventually 
invited to join On A Friday, but it was clear 
who was in charge. Yorke was both driving 
force and chief songwriter. Stylistically, 
though, he was all over the place: the 
primitive home demo tape he handed 
to his bandmates in 1986 featured tracks 
ranging from the Prince-with-bad- 
scratching stylings of Rattlesnakes to 
the feedback-heavy What Is That You Say. 
Despite its lack of refinement, the rest 
of On A Friday were impressed. 

“After hearing it, I knew that Thom was 
writing great songs,” said Jonny Greenwood. 
“I couldn’t get over the fact that if I played 
an Elvis Costello record and then his stuff, 
the songs were as good.” 

Not everyone agreed. A local promoter 
named Mac booked On A Friday to play 
their first gig at Oxford’s Jericho Tavern 
in 1987. It saw Jonny Greenwood perched 
nervously on the side of the stage with his 
harmonica (“Waiting for his big moment,” 
as Phil Selway later put it). 

“It was terrible,” Mac later 
recalled. “/They were like ]A bad 
version of [early- 9 80s funk-pop 
hand/Haircut 100.” 

B y autumn 1987, O’Brien, 
Colin Greenwood and 
Selway were all at 
university. Jonny 
Greenwood still had 
three years to complete at 
Abingdon, while Thom Yorke 
wouldn’t go to university for 
another year. For the next four 
years, On A Friday would be 
operational only during holiday 
time, although they would find 
the time to briefly experiment 
with a pair of female saxophonists. 

Yorke had initially resisted the lure 
of further education, holding down a job 
selling suits in the menswear section of 
an Oxford department store over the 
summer, despite informing his employers 
in typically forthright fashion 
that their stock was “crap”. When 
he was accused of stealing, he 
handed in his notice. A few weeks 
later, Yorke was accepted on an B 

























Oxford's Curfew 
magazine, featuring 
Thom Yorke's very 
first interview. 


H English and Art course at Exeter 
University, which he started in 
October 1988. 

Despite the degree, Yorke was 
mostly interested in making a go 
of music. He formed a second band, 
the violin-augmented Headless 
Chickens, with fellow student Simon 
Shackleton. One early Headless 
Chickens track was High And Dry, 
later to be reworked on Radiohead’s 
The Bends. Another, Creep, would 
be saved for On A Friday 

“Most of the time I was busy 
bragging about my future as a pop 
star,” he admitted. “My sketchbooks 
were full of lyrics and designs for 
record sleeves.” 

It was there, too, that Yorke first 
developed an interest in electronic music, 
playing tracks from the likes of The 
Shamen and jungle pioneers The Ragga 
Twins during his regular Friday night 
DJ set at the student union. This period also 
saw him toy with a skewed visual identity, 
parading around in charity-shop hats and 
coats normally worn by pensioners, to the 
annoyance of the locals. 

“I was into dressing like an old man,” 
he explained. “But I went out one night 
and there were these three blokes waiting 
to beat someone up. They said something 
and I turned around and blew them a kiss 
and that was it. They beat the living shit out 
of me. That put me off fighting. I thought, 
I’m kind of asking for it here.” 

B y the summer of 1991, Thom 

Yorke was more serious than ever 
about his future as a rock star. 
Having finished his degree and 
disbanded Headless Chickens, 
he returned to Oxford and On A Friday. 
Fortunately, the others were on the same 
wavelength. As if to underline this, the band 
- with the exception of Jonny Greenwood 
- moved into a semi-detached house near 
the town centre together. 

It was a typical student-style set-up. 

The financially strapped Yorke slept on 
the living-room floor. Selway complained 
that the others stole his honey Rotten pork 
pies were extricated from the back of the 
sofa. But it was here that the group explored 
their common musical ground: Pixies, 
Magazine and especially R.E.M. (who 
for a time they argued they sounded too 
much like). 

Getting Yorke’s vision onto tape proved 
tricky. Various scrappy attempts at 
recording demos in people’s homes and 
village halls came to nothing. Eventually, 
the band entered a local studio 
called Dungeon and 
recorded three of Yorke’s 
songs - Give It Up, What 
Is That You Say and Stop 
Whispering. The latter in 
particular attracted the 
attention of another local 
studio owner, Chris 
Hufford, who had 
produced a demo 
| for Reading 
g “shoegaze” outfit 
1 Slowdive and had 


been given the 
On A Friday tape 
by a mutual 
friend. Hufford 
and partner 
Bryce Edge went 
to the Jericho 
Tavern to see the 
band play live. 

“I was utterly 
blown away,” 
he said. “Thom 
was incredible. 

I made a complete 
buffoon of myself, 
bursting backstage saying, I’ve got to work 
with you! I could see it on a world level, 
even then.” 

His enthusiasm convinced Yorke. In 
October 1991, the band entered Hufford 
and Edge’s studio, Courtyard, to record 
a new, five-song demo featuring future 
Pablo Honey tracks You, I Can’t and 
Thinking About You, plus the ill-advisedly 
funky Nothing Touches Me (about a jailed 
paedophile), and awfully named Echo 
8c The Bunnymen steal Philippa Chicken. 

It became known as the Manic Hedgehog 
EP, after the local record shop that 
stocked it. 

Flaws aside, the tape was to prove crucial 
to the band’s career. Working in the local 
branch of record store Our Price, Colin 
Greenwood handed a copy to a passing EMI 
sales rep-turned-A8cR man named Keith 
Wozencroft. Impressed with what he heard, 
Wozencroft drove back up to Oxford the 
following week to attend an On A Friday 
gig in a marquee pitched in a local park. 

“There was no one there in this little 
tent apart from a couple of their 
girlfriends,” Wozencroft told Q in 1997. “But 
they played really well. 

I left a message with the 
sound guy that it was great 
and kept in touch over the 
next few months.” 

hen On 
A Friday 
played 
their 
next gig 

at the Jericho Tavern 
in November 1991, the 
venue was packed with 


A8cR men up from 
London. Wozencroft’s 
interest in the tape had 
sparked attention from 
other labels, despite the 
fact the band hand played 
a mere eight gigs in their 
five years together. But 
in a show of loyalty to 
the man who had got 
there first, on 21 
December 1991 On A 
Friday signed with EMI 
for an unspecified sum. 

There was, however, 
one condition: On A 
Friday had to ditch their 
name (not a problem given that even the 
band considered it to be “shit”). Proposed 
alternatives such as Jude and Music weren’t 
much better. They eventually settled on 
Radiohead, borrowed from a forgettable, 
reggae-flecked song on Talking Heads’ 

1986 album True Stories. 

“Radiohead sums up all these things 
about receiving stuff,” Yorke later enthused. 
“It’s about the way you take information in, 
the way you respond to the environment 
you’re put in.” 

If the issue of the name had been 
resolved, their image needed work. 

Onstage, Yorke sometimes sported a brown 
polo-neck jumper, while to his left Jonny 
Greenwood would wear a tight T-shirt 
confusingly bearing the name of British 
funk outfit the Brand New Heavies. It 
was the beginning of a lengthy struggle 
to cement their identity that would last 
another three years, until the release of 
The Bends in 1995, when an interest in 
attention-grabbing videos and Stanley 
Donwood’s artwork began to take the strain. 

What they lacked in image, they made 
up for in the sort of determination and 
ambition that had defined Yorke’s life 
and would characterise their future. In 
December 1991, the singer gave his very first 
interview, to local Oxford magazine Curfew. 
In it, he made his intentions perfectly clear. 

“People sometimes say we take things 
too seriously,” he declared. “But it’s the only 
way you’ll get anywhere. We’re not going 
to sit around and wait and just be happy if 
something turns up. We are ambitious. You 
have to be.” 

A few moments later, Yorke made his 
point explicit. 

“I want nothing more in the whole world 
than to be a star,” he said. “Nothing more.” ® 


OXFORDS 




HN A rixu-'AY 

V-*' 1 ?- the bell 


the bel l 

Mexico 


68 Q 











































































PABLO HONEY 


[PARLOPHONE, 1993] 


OK Computer was a long way off. 


r 


exception. 1992’s Drill EP had been a faltering first step, ana 
_ their debut album found them still searching for an identi y. 
Recording at Chipping Norton Studio and Oxforas Courtyard 
S£h US p?oducer P s P Sean Slade and Paul Q Kolderie (Dinosaur Jr/ 
Lemonheads), it was the sound of a quintessential^ English ban 
trying to squeeze themselves into an ill-fittmg US alt-rock shaded 
hole.fronically, America embraced them thanks to the album s one 
moment of brilliance, a lacerating anthem whose theme of self- 
loathing chimed with grunge’s angst. Its title: Creep. 



Fig. 1: The sleeve 
of debut EP Drill: 
a ‘faltering first step’. 


YOU 

Originally released on I992's Drill 
EP [Fig. il but here re-recorded with 
Sean Slade and Paul Q Kolderie, 

You is that rarest of things: 
a Radiohead love song, albeit a 
twisted one. Jonny Greenwood's 
flowery arpeggios give way to 
layered rock guitars on this tale of 
obsessive, all-consuming passion. 

The line, "It's like the world is going to end so 
soon" previews the bleaker themes that 
would emerge in Yorke's later lyrical career. 
Played live as recently as 2002. 

HOW DO YOU? 

Unconvincing attempt at punk rock that sees 
Yorke giving it his best Stars In Their Eyes 
Johnny Rotten. Concerns the antics of an 
unnamed mummy's boy-turned-"power 
freak" determined to steamroller his way 
to success ("He steals and he bullies/Any 
way that he can"). Descends into a cacophony 
of thumping piano and feedback before 
collapsing after just two minutes. Rightly 
singled out for ridicule by reviewers on the 
album's release. 

STOP WHISPERING 

Early On A Friday track, and the song that 
convinced Bryce Edge and Chris Hufford 
that Yorke and co were worth managing. The 
band were aiming for the Pixies, though its 
widescreen approach puts it closer to U2. 
Nailing their stadium-sized aspirations 
proved difficult, however. "We tinkered with it 
a bit," recalls Paul Kolderie. "It was kind of a 


sprawling thing and we weren't 
sure how long it would be." 
Eventually clocking in at five 
minutes, it finds Thom Yorke 
venting his ambivalent feelings 
towards authority figures ("And 
they're cursing me, and they won't 
let me be"). Live, its "doesn't matter 
anyway" section concluded with a 
breakdown in which the singer 
would nightly snarl, "Fuck you!" 

THINKING ABOUT YOU 

Acoustic ballad with acerbic aftertaste, 
originally included on the Drill EP. Yorke puts 
himself in the position of the lonely 
ex of a star whose "records are 
a hit". Further underlines his 
distrust of the music business with 
the line "who bribed the company 
to come and see you, honey?" and 
offers the unsavoury image of him 
masturbating over thoughts of his 
one-time paramour. Features 
Jonny Greenwood on harmonium 
in an early indication of his future, 
instrument-juggling ways. 


ANYONECAN 

PLAYGUlTAR " 

The most cynical of Radiohead's early songs, 
heaping scorn on the youthful desire for 
validation via rock stardom. Over abrasive, 
Sonic Youth-indebted guitars, Yorke casts 
himself as a desperate wannabe standing on 
a beach with my guitar", as if appearing in the 
most cliched of'80s music videos. Everyone 


in the studio, from band to catering staff, was 
roped in to play guitar, with the track then 
being cut up and added to the arrangement. 

RIPCORD 

Spindly, punk-influenced thrasher that 
found Yorke airing his fears at signing his 
life away to EMI, metaphorically preparing 
himself to be dropped from a great height 
without a parachute. Introducing the song 
onstage in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1993, he 
elucidated on its meaning, saying it tackled 
the dilemma of "signing, having lots of money 
and absolutely no idea what the fuck to do 
with your life." 

VEGETABLE 

Creep's angry, evil twin: a petulant rocker 
that finds Yorke in "outsider" mode, 
externalising his ire with a relish that verges 
on the childish. It reaches a peak with the 
tantrum-like couplet: "I spit on the hand 
that feeds me/I will not control myself". 

Defiant as opposed to defeated, it remained 
in their live set until 1995. 

PROVE YOURSELF 

The lead track on the Drill EP, Prove Yourself 
hitched its wagon firmly to grunge, with the 

Neil Young-influenced country rock 
verses giving way to distorted 
choruses, while its "I'm better off 
dead" hookline introduced Thom 
Yorke's alienated worldview well 
before Creep. Bizarrely, it found an 
unlikely champion in perma-tanned 
Radio I DJ Gary Davies [Fig. 2], who 
made it his track of the week on its 
original release. "I didn't know 
anything about the band - it just 
sounded great," he said. "Years 
later I bumped into one of the band, 
can't remember which one, and he said, You 
were the first person to play the record - not 
John Peel or the Evening Session. It's very 
nice that he remembered." 



3h 

Fig. 2: Radio 1 DJ Gary 
Davies, unlikely early 
Radiohead champion. 


CREEP 

WritteiTbv Yorke during his time at Exeter University while suffering from unrequited love 
and nicknamed "Crap" by the band due to its siacker-anthem ubiquity, Creep.was! a> happy 
accident Producers Slade and Kolderie were struggling with Inside My Head and Lurgee 
until they remembered a track that the band had played in rehearsal - introduced by Yorke 
as "our Scott Walker song" (which led the Americans to erroneously believe it was a cover). 
And so the masterful Creep, a vivid portrait of the outsider, was recorded in one take. The 
crunching guitar that usheJs in the chorus was the result of Jonny Greenwood trying to 

sabotage a tune he considered too wimpy. 

BEST BIT: The nape-tingling final cry of "run" in the falsetto middle eight. 

STRANGE BUT TRUE: Yorke claims he received fan mail from "murderers saying ow mu 
they could relate to Creep. 


1 CAN'T 

Fuzzy, Dinosaur Jr-indebted track first 
recorded for I99l's Manic Hedgehog demo 
by manager Hufford and Edge. Ironically, 
given that they had produced Dinosaur Jr 
themselves, Kolderie and Slade struggled 
to better the original version. "We could 
never get it at the right speed," says Kolderie. 
"I wanted it to be faster and everyone else 
wanted it to be slower, and we went back 
and forth. I had high hopes for that one 
and I don't feel like it panned out that well." 
The track that eventually featured on 
the album was the original demo version, 
though it remained little more than filler 
- borne out by the fact that it had been 
dropped from the live set by the time Pablo 
Honey was released. 











































































































































































































•wail 

■MMI 


Radiohead in 
Thom Yorke's 
Oxford flat, 1993. 


'PABLO HONEY 
FOUNDTHE BAND 
SEARCHING FOR 
AN IDENTITY/ 


LURGEE 

Alongside Creep, the track that suggested 
that Radiohead were more than just another 
indie rock band: a gorgeous, mid-paced 
track with clean, chiming guitarsand a 
melody that snakes its way up the scales 
before reaching the falsetto note that 
ushers in the chorus. As its title suggests, 
Lurgee finds its narrator recovering from 
illness-through-failed romance, though still 
unsure whether the worst is over ("I got 
something I don't know"). Last played 
onstage in 1998. 

BLOW OUT 

The finale of both Pablo Honey and the band's 
live set at the time, Blow Out pointed to the 
future. An early prototype of Weird Fishes/ 
Arpeggi with its meshing of simple guitar 
figures. Here, however, the '60s-echoing, 
almost bossa nova-grooved Blow Out builds 
noisily to a full-tilt psych-rock conclusion. 
Considered by the band to be the high point 
of Pablo Honey, ■tom doyle 


B-SIDES_&_OTHER RECORDINGS 


PABLO HONEY Producers: Sean Slade and Paul 
Q Kolderie, Chris HufFord | Recorded: September - 
November 1992, Chipping Norton Studio; Courtyard 
Studio, Oxford | Released: 22 February 1993 


STUPID CAR 

First in a string of songs with 
motorphobic themes (Killer Cars, 
Airbag), written after Yorke and his 
then-girlfriend were involved in a 
road accident. Can also be read as 
an admission of sexual inadequacy 
("You put my brain in overload/ 

I can't change gears"). 

AVAILABLE ON: DRILL EP (1992) 

INSIDE MY HEAD 

Pixies-esque track earmarked as a 
possible single until they struggled 
to commit a satisfactory version to 
tape during sessions. Another song 
dealing with Yorke's conflicting 
emotions after signing to EMI, with 
the singer portraying himself as 
abused victim. "What do you want 
from me now you got me? Now my 
energy you suck from me." 
AVAILABLE ON: CREEP EP (1992) 

MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION 

Yorke lives out his escapist 
fantasies, dreaming of writing a 
"bad cheque" and disappearing on a 
flight somewhere. An unremarkable 
thrasher that only gets interesting 
with its mid-song tempo change 
into Lennon-like balladry. 

AVAILABLE ON: CREEP EP (1992) 


FAITHLESS, THE WONDER BOY 

Glam-tinged quiet/loud ballad that 
featured in the band's live sets 
throughout 1993. Lyrically oblique 
verses touch on feelings of lost 
childhood and jealousy, though 
Yorke insisted its direct chorus 
("I can't put the needle in") was 
about "revenge" rather than drugs. 
Bafflingly excluded from Pablo 
Honey, it remains a lost gem. 
AVAILABLE ON: ANYONE CAN PLAY 
GUITAR (1993) 

COKE BABIES 

Its title was a dig at the '90s 
shoegazing movement centred 
around fellow Oxford band Ride, 
but Coke Babies' ambient guitar 
atmospherics placed it closer 
to Brian Eno's work with U2 on 
Achtung Baby. Lyrically, a throwaway 
exercise in wordplay, as Yorke riffs 
on the word "easy" ("Easy living... 
Easy listening"). 

AVAILABLE ON: ANYONE CAN PLAY 
GUITAR (1993) 

YES I AM 

Prompted by Elvis Costello's 
admission that his early songs were 
motivated by "revenge and guilt", 

Yes I Am finds Yorke spurning the 


attentions of an acquaintance who 
had previously done the same to him 
("The last time you locked all the 
doors"). Its over-arching theme of 
obsession and rejection makes it a 
close cousin of Creep. 

AVAILABLE ON: CREEP (REISSUE) (1993) 

POP IS DEAD 

Between Pablo Honey and the 
breakthrough reissued Creep EP 
came this stand-alone single, 
arguably the nadir of Radiohead's 
career. A clumsy attempt to 
satirise the media's attempts to 
repackage everything from art to 
video games as the new rock'n'roll, 
its Jam-influenced sound was 
neither convincing nor much 
cop. Accurately described by Ed 
O'Brien as "bollocks". 

AVAILABLE ON: POP IS DEAD (1993). 

BANANA CO (ACOUSTIC) 

Satirical acoustic love-letter to 
a multi-national corporation that 
presaged Thom Yorke's later 
involvement in the anti¬ 
globalisation movement. A full 
electric version would appear on 
the B-side of I996's Street Spirit 
(Fade Out) single. 

AVAILABLE ON: POP IS DEAD (1993). 










































THE BENDS 


[PARLOPHONE, 1995] 


They’d found their voice. 


T he Bends marked several “firsts” for Radiohead, all of which 
would, over the years, become integral to the band. It was the 
first time they worked with production guru Nigel Godrich, 
then an engineer, as well as sleeve designer Stanley Donwood. It was 
also the first time Thom Yorke’s anger and self-loathing became a 
little cryptic. All elements that helped erase the false start that was 
Pablo Honey, and provide the missing pieces in a louder, angrier, 
altogether more confident unit. Produced by John Leckie (The Stone 
Roses, The Verve, Muse),The Bends was recorded throughout 1994 
and released in March 1995 - created, then, while Britpop was in full 
swing. Crucially, although an instant hit in the UK, it stood apart 
from the prevailing trend, a beacon of modernity in a largely 
nostalgic age. The Bends was, like its creators, out there on its own. 


PLANET TELEX 

The only track devised in the studio and 
completed in a single drunken, late-night 
jam following a boozy dinner in a Greek 
restaurant, during which the normally sober 
Radiohead decided to record using drum 
loops. Rhythms taken from the end of B-side 
Killer Cars were rejigged to form the basis of 
a tune whose lyric was improvised in one 
take by a horizontal Yorke. The original title, 
Planet Xerox, was changed to sidestep any 
problems with the office equipment giant. 


THE BENDS 

The band worked through several takes, 
initially worried that the title track sounded 
too bombastic, an impression mitigated by 
the tinkling sound effects in the opening. 
Jonny Greenwood tried many different 
guitar-and-amp combinations before 
returning to his original Fender set up in 
Oxfordshire's Manor studios in 
August 1994, where the track was 
finally completed. Its "don't have 
any real friends" line put it in the 
frame as a possible follow-up single 
to Creep; instead The Bends got 
the nod as the album's title track. 


Jim Warren producing, this delicate acoustic 
track was never intended for the album. Later, 
Yorke even dismissed it as "not bad... it's very 
bad." It was its presumed commercial appeal 
that led to its inclusion - in the form of the 
original demo recording - at the mixing stage 
in August. An unplugged antidote to the 
preceding storm of the title track, it featured 
one of Yorke's most touchingly choirboyish 
vocals, wrapped around a lyric that mocked 
macho vanity. 



HIGH & DRY 

Done in one take in 1993, at a studio 
owned by their management, with 



FAKE PLASTIC TREES 

Recorded at Rak studios in April, on the 
evening the band returned to the studio 
mesmerised by a Jeff Buckley gig [Fig. 1]. 

A heart-melting melody disguised a caustic 
attack on various forms of consumerism, with 
Yorke inspired by London's Canary Wharf. 
Although its most memorable target was 
plastic surgery, "on girls in the '80s, but 

gravity always wins". As airy and 
acoustic as High & Dry, the 
arrangement was more complex, 
using submerged strings and an old 
Hammond organ, played by Jonny 
Greenwood, whose tone controls 
required resetting after every bar. 


Fig i: Jeff Buckley, the 
inspiration for Fake 
Plastic Trees. 


BONES 


A strong early contender for lead 
single, Bones was another quiet/ 


JUST 


The pronounced quiet/loud dynamics of Just defined the dominant style of the album, 
a more evolved version of the emotionally fraught sound of the grunge movement. The 
opening chords have something of the feel of the intro to Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, 
whose leader Kurt Cobain committed suicide on 5 April, partway through the initial recording 
sessions. Although the theme of self-loathing and breakdown in Yorke's lyric - "You do it to 
yourself, you do" - could be read as a comment on Cobain's demise, Just, like every Bends 
track bar Planet Telex, was written months before recording began. It was producer John 
Leckie's favourite track. 

BEST BIT: Jonny Greenwood's manic, shrieking guitar is followed by a sudden cliff-hanging 

pause, then Yorke's accusatory howl, "You do it to yourself..." 

STRANGE BUT TRUE: Despite its astonishing range of guitar sounds, Just was recorded live in 
the studio with no overdubs. 


A 




loud moment, underpinned by an unusual - 
for Radiohead - blues-boogie beat. After 
much trial and error, the tempo, and the 
tuning of Phil Selway's drums, were eventually 
settled during the second stint of recordings 
at the Manor in July. Indecipherably cryptic 
though the lyrics mostly were, lines such as 
"now I can't climb the stairs" enhanced 
Yorke's fragile persona. 


(NICE DREAM) 


It sounded like the entire band were 
strumming acoustic guitars on this lilting 












































































































'A BEACON OF 
MODERNITY IN A 
NOSTALGIC AGE/ 


beauty. And they were, all five of them, on the 
terrace outside the Manor studio one sunny 
day in July. John Leckie's intention was to 
recreate the lush ambience of George 
Harrison's My Sweet Lord, suiting lyrics about 
a "good angel/' a "garden" and a sense of 
mysterious belonging. The cello and violin 
nearly didn't make it after Yorke learned that 
Leckie had recently used strings on an album 
by Ride, the band's Oxford rivals of the time. 

MY IRON LUNG 

The album's lead single was also the product 


of its most unusual recording. The track 
was spliced together using live takes of the 
verses from an MTV performance at the 
Astoria in London in the early summer, 
alongside choruses edited from the earlier, 
Rak studio version. According to Yorke, 
the iron lung of the title was a reference to 
how the success of Creep had both helped 
and hindered Radiohead's development. 
The way the song swerved confidently 
between snarling, squealing guitars and 
cool lyrical reverie indicated they were now 
on a different page entirely. 



BULLETPROOF... I WISH I WAS 

The title was a self-explanatory plea by 
Yorke: if only he weren't so damn sensitive. 
Like High & Dry and Fake Plastic Trees, 
Bulletproof did not try to conceal its origins 
as a solo acoustic strum with a dreamy 
falsetto floated on top, but it took time to 
polish. The whooshing sound effects and 
ghostly whale-song howls - randomly 
improvised on guitar by Greenwood and 
O'Brien - were only added at the Manor five 
months after recording had started. B 


Q 73 


















































THE COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 



B-SIDES & OTHER RECORDINGS 


THE TRICKSTER 

A relative lightweight by the 
standards of The Bends, both 
lyrically and musically, The 
Trickster's straightforward, garage 
guitar arrangement pointed back to 
the sound of Pablo Honey. This was 
one of the first recordings in the 
Rak sessions of March and April, 
and was never considered to serve 
as anything other than a B-side for 
the follow-up single to Creep. 
AVAILABLE ON: MY IRON LUNG CDI (1994) 

PUNCHDRUNK LOVESICK 

LOVESONG 

This dreamy freak-out had its 
origins in a row between Yorke 
and his girlfriend. The title referred 
to the couple's curious way of 
resolving their disagreements. 
"Whenever my partner and I have 
fights, we pull out our Punch & Judy 
puppets," Yorke revealed. After one 
particularly energetic spat, Judy 
needed to be taken back to the toy 
shop for repairs, at which point 
Yorke wrote a song oozing 
contrition: "A beautiful girl can 
turn your world to dust." 

AVAILABLE ON: MY IRON LUNG CDI (1994) 

LOZENGE OF LOVE 

A twisted love song - summed up 
by Yorke gently crooning, "I won't be 
around when you really need me" - 
the title was lifted from Sad Steps, 
an early poem by the laureate of 
failed love affairs, Philip Larkin. Still 
considered an underrated classic, 
the song benefited from Jonny 
Greenwood's growing confidence 
as a lead guitarist of considerable 
intricacy and melodic flair. 

AVAILABLE ON: MY IRON LUNG CDI (1994) 

LEWIS (MISTREATED) 

A jaunty, upbeat guitar riff 
disguised the grim subject matter 
of a song in which Yorke addressed 
the "low corporate" employee 
Lewis of the bracketed title whose 
soulless, dead-end job has led him 
to consider suicide: "The smell of 
fear is thicker than you think, don't 
do it, don't jump." Despite being 
one of Radiohead's most exuberant 


B-sides from The Bends sessions, 
this has seldom showed up in 
their live set. 

AVAILABLE ON: MY IRON LUNG CD2 (1994) 

PERMANENT DAYLIGHT 

Legend has it that this short, 
guitar-heavy piece was recorded 
as a tribute to Sonic Youth, a band 
Radiohead certainly admired at the 
time. The track started out as an 
instrumental during their live 
shows of 1993, was upgraded into 
a song for The Bends sessions and, 
despite its B-side status, was still 
part of the band's set during the 
Amnesiac tour of 2001. 

AVAILABLE ON: MY IRON LUNG CD2 (1994) 

YOU NEVER WASH UP 

AFTER YOURSELF 

An unusually whimsical item with 
a lyric boasting lines such as, 
"yesterday's meal is hugging the 
plates", which were guaranteed 
to appeal to slacker students 
everywhere. This one-take track 
never aspired to be more than a B- 
side and disappeared without trace 
following its release on the back of 
My Iron Lung. Like Black Star, the 
band recorded it with assistant 
engineer Nigel Godrich at Rak while 
John Leckie was away mixing. 
AVAILABLE ON: MY IRON LUNG CD2 (1994) 

INDIA RUBBER 

The booming drums suggest 
Radiohead were getting into mid- 
'90s dance trend trip-hop, 
specifically DJ Shadow, although 
the lyrics were Yorke at his most 
nonsensically self-hating ("Now the 
dogs have had their meat, I think 
I'll go plug in the mains"). Jonny 
Greenwood's laughter at the end 
lightened the mood. 

AVAILABLE ON: FAKE 
PLASTIC TREES 
CDI (1995) 

HOW CAN YOU 

BE SURE? 

An unhappy love 
song, with Yorke 
on the outside, 
looking askance at 


a relationship that seems doomed 
to failure. Radiohead first recorded 
this for a 1993 radio session and 
resurrected it for The Bends at the 
suggestion of Colin Greenwood. It 
didn't make the cut but did surface 
later on the soundtrack to the 
Japanese movie Nowhere. 

AVAILABLE ON: FAKE PLASTIC TREES 
CDI (1995) 

MAQUILADORA 

A catchy, straight ahead guitar 
rocker rooted in the pop-grunge 
style of Pablo Honey, this track 
never aimed for the tortured 
grandiosity of The Bends - save, 
perhaps, for its indecipherably 
cryptic title and crash-and-burn 
lyrics. It worked best live, as shown 
on the MTV-filmed London Astoria 
performance (available on DVD), 
which the band recorded while in 
the middle of making the album. 
AVAILABLE ON: HIGH & DRY CDI (1995) 

KILLER CARS 

This live favourite, with its motorist- 
hating agenda, was initially 
considered to be a contender as a 
single, but lost ground as the more 
ambitious character of The Bends 
emerged. The voices heard in the 
middle section were recorded in a 
phone conversation with a luxury 
car showroom in London's Mayfair 
during which a friend of Nigel 
Godrich posed as a potential buyer. 
AVAILABLE ON: HIGH & DRY CD2 (1995) 

TALK SHOW HOST 

Another foray into trip-hop, this 
track outgrew its B-side status and 
became a firm live favourite. It later 
appeared on the soundtrack to Baz 
Luhrmann's film retooling of Romeo 
+ Juliet [Fig. 3 ] in 1996. 
AVAILABLE ON: STREET 
SPIRIT (FADE OUT) 


BISHOP'S ROBES 

and mournful, 
the point. The 
bastard headmaster" 
the verse, the 
references to kids 
"tearing themselves to 
bits on playing fields" 
and the keening chorus, "I'm not 
going back", ail left no doubt as to 
how Yorke felt about his spell at 
Abingdon public school. 

AVAILABLE ON: STREET SPIRIT (FADE 
OUT) CDI (1996) 


BLACK STAR 

A love song with an unusual fade-in opening 
and an oddly hiccupping bassline, this 
was the first track the band's soon-to-be 
regular producer Nigel Godrich worked on 
unsupervised. Black Star was initially 
regarded as B-side material, to be knocked 
off while Leckie was away working on 
preliminary single mixes. Rak's assistant 
engineer Godrich bonded with the band, the 
result being that this upbeat tune with 
a giddy chorus was promoted onto the album 
after a playback in September. 

SULK 

Inspired by the Hungerford massacre of 1987, 
when lone gunman Michael Ryan killed 16 
people in a small Berkshire town, Sulk was the 
last album track to be finished. Its late arrival 
was partly down to its complex layering of 
electronics and guitars, but mainly because 
of Yorke's worry that the song's original lyric, 
which contained the line "just shoot your 
gun", might be taken as a crude cash-in on 
the suicide of Kurt Cobain. Even with the 
revised lyric and thunderous rolling rhythm, 
it has seldom made it into the band's live set. 

STREET SPIRIT (FADE OUT) 

Yorke insisted he didn't really write this, that 
he was merely a conduit for something he 
called "our purest, saddest song," and one 
that he still finds emotionally exhausting to 
perform. The arpeggio guitar part was Ed 
O'Brien's big moment, 
using an instrument 
constructed by the band's 
guitar tech "Plank". The 
album's fifth single, it went 
Top 5 in February 1996, 
thanks in part to its 
Jonathan Glazer-directed 

prOmO [Fig. 2]. ■ ROBERT SANDALL 


Fig. 2: Video for Street 
Spirit (Fade Out), their 
‘purest, saddest song.’ 


THE BENDS Producers: John Leckie, Radiohead, 
Jim Warren, Nigel Godrich | Recorded: March - 
September 1994, Rak and Abbey Road studios, London: 
Manor studios, Oxfordshire! Released: 13 March 1995. 


MOLASSES 

A slow, hypnotic groove overlaid 
with a Middle Eastern flavoured 
synthesizer riff and a catchy 
harmonised vocal. The lyric's 
elliptical references to "genocide," 
"rent-free earthquake zones" and 
"starving waitresses in plasters" 
suggested that Yorke was riffing 
on newspaper headlines. 
AVAILABLE ON: STREET SPIRIT (FADE 
OUT) CD2 (1996) 


BANANACO 

An acoustic version of this song 
first appeared on a 1993 radio 
session, which later made it onto 
Radiohead's Itch EP. Its popularity 
live - and particularly the "Oh, 
Banana Co" hook - persuaded 
the band to re-record it at Rak in 
March 1994. Its effervescent, 
almost pop-rock style made it a 
suitable contrast for the moody 
intensity of the A-side. 

AVAILABLE ON: STREET SPIRIT (FADE 
OUT) CD2 (1996) 


Recording, alfresco-style, 
Manor studios, 1994. 








































































The weird world of Thom Yorke and chums is available for all to view on YouTube. 





'W • 


.V 


M 


i» EZglj 



LIFE'S A BEACH 

l In the summer of 
1993, Radiohead became 
the first act to appear on 
frothy US MTV show 
Beach House. Filmed at 
an opulent mansion in 
The Hamptons, an 
uncomfortable-looking 
band barrel through 
Anyone Can Play Guitar 
while teens gyrate 
around a swimming 
pool behind them. 
Everything they've 
done since has been 
a reaction to this. 

WATCH OUT FOR: Yorke 
jumping into the pool at 
the song's climax. 
KEYWORDS: Radiohead, 
Beach House 


El NOBODY DOES 
ml IT BETTER 

Yorke described Carly 
Simon's theme to 1977 
James Bond film The 
Spy Who Loved Me as 
the "sexiest song that 
was ever written". Cue 
this respectful cover, 
recorded in 1995 for 
MTV's Most Wanted. 
Drummer Phil Selway 
was less enthused. 

"It lacks a certain 
something in hindsight," 
he grumbled afterwards. 
WATCH OUT FOR: 

The giant "No Nukes" 
sticker on Jonny 
Greenwood's guitar. 
KEYWORDS: Radiohead, 
Nobody Better 


El NO SURPRISES 
CJ LIVE AT 
GLASTONBURY 

Highlight of their career¬ 
making headline set 
at I997's rain-sodden 
Glastonbury. Michael 
Eavis cited their show 
as "the most inspiring 
festival gig in 30 years." 
Ed O'Brien was less 
impressed, describing it 
as "the worst night of our 
lives," due to technical 
difficulties throughout. 
WATCH OUT FOR: The 
fireworks exploding, 
sealing Radiohead's 
status as Glasto's 
unofficial house band. 
KEYWORDS: No 
Surprises, Glastonbury 


i FROM THE 
BASEMENT 

A solo Thom Yorke 
premieres In Rainbows 
tracks Videotape and 
Down Is The New Up on 
Radiohead producer 
Nigel Godrich's 2006 TV 
show-cum-webcast. The 
intimate surroundings 
of the BBC's Maida Vale 
studios are reflected 
in the stripped-down 
performances:just 
Yorke and his piano. 
WATCH OUT FOR: In a 
later episode, Yorke plays 
the recently written Last 
Flowers with a lyric sheet 
propped on the piano. 
KEYWORDS: Radiohead, 
Basement 


M"NEXT 
CJ QUESTION" 

Thom Yorke in "grouch" 
mode during this Kid A- 
era interview for Dutch 
TV show Musica. The 
mood turns frosty when 
the interviewer prods him 
on whether he's going 
solo. "I don't want to be 
answering questions on 
that for the next fucking 
five years," says Yorke, 
with a deathly glare. 
WATCH OUT FOR: The 
interviewer twigging that 
things aren't going as 
planned:" [long pause] 

Do you have a problem 
with those questions?" 
KEYWORDS: Thom Yorke, 
awkward interview 
























































































































From disembodied heads to James Bond karaoke, here are 10 of the best clips. 




LIKE SPINNING 
PLATES 


Commissioned to make a 
video for Amnesiac track 
Like Spinning Plates, 
artist Johnny Hardstaff 
delivers a slice of 21st- 
century psychedelia 
that captures the 
song's disconnected 
technophobia. The close- 
ups of otherworldly 
machines and rotating 
mechanical Siamese 
twins are as disturbing 
as they are striking. 
WATCH OUT FOR: Those 
sinister babies. Director 
David Cronenberg would 
be proud. 

KEYWORDS: Radiohead, 
Spinning Plates 



ED O'BRIEN'S 
SHOWBIZ LIFE 


Filmed for2002's 
Radiohead TV webcast, 
this barmy clip finds the 
guitarist responding to a 
series of knowingly inane 
questions ("Have you 
ever snogged a fan?") 
with seal-like yelps. 
Another clip features 
Thom Yorke answering 
similar questions in a 
distorted voice. 

WATCH OUT FOR: 
O'Brien's look of mild 
embarrassment after 
he sings There's No 
Business Like Show 
Business in a daft voice. 
KEYWORDS: Ed O'Brien, 
Showbiz Life 


|THE GREAT 
I OUTDOORS 


Back-to-nature acoustic 
version of In Rainbows 
track Faust Arp, featuring 
Thom Yorke and Jonny 
Greenwood playing on 
Wittenham Clumps, a hill 
overlooking Didcot power 
station, at sunset. 
Directed by comedian 
Adam Buxton, it was 
filmed just 24 hours 
before it was broadcast 
as part ofthe2007's 
Thumbs Down webcast. 
WATCH OUT FOR: 


Yorke's voice battling 
with the noise of the wind 
crunching on the mics. 
KEYWORDS: Radiohead, 
Faust Arp 



IK wilde kofnendpft|f|i;p 
met zuike mwmimmn. 


ri WHAT'S IN 
fcj THE BOX? 

Spoof of David Fincher's 
1995 thriller Se7en, from 
the Thumbs Down 
webcast. Footage from 
the original movie is 
spliced with specially 
filmed material. Cue 
Morgan Freeman opening 
the cardboard box, only 
to find the disembodied 
head of Thom York 
singing 15 Step. 

WATCH OUT FOR: 


Yorke's appeal to 
Fincher: "Please don't 
issue us with a writ... 
we meant it in the best 
possible taste." 
KEYWORDS: Radiohead, 
Seven 


LIVE AT 93 
FEET EAST 

In keeping with the spirit 
of In Rainbows, the band 
played a "surprise" 
show at 240-capacity 
London club 93 Feet 
East in January 2008. 
Authentically lo-fi 
footage captures the 
intimacy of their smallest 
gig in years, while the set 
includes the whole of the 
album, plus a six-song 
encore of old favourites. 
WATCH OUT FOR: Final 
track The Bends, which 
sees Yorke mumbling 
through the verses like 
a petulant teenager. 
KEYWORDS: Radiohead, 
93 Feet East 

































































THE COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 



OKCOMPUTER 


[PARLOPHONE, 1997] 


They saw the future and didn’t care for it. 



T he success of The Bends gave Radiohead the confidence to stretch 
and experiment. Early sessions at the band’s Canned Applause 
studio yielded instant results. Yet it was only after co-producer 
Nigel Godrich suggested they decamp to St Catherine’s Court, 
a mansion near Bath owned by actress Jane Seymour, that the scope 
of their ambition became clear. Godrich encouraged them to try new 
technology and unusual environments - Exit Music (For A Film) was 
partly recorded in the stone entrance hall - while the increasingly 
politicised Yorke found his true voice: that of the little man trying to 
retain his humanity in the face of relentless technological and 
material advances. A landmark album in every respect. 


AIRBAG 

Like Planet Telex before it, an oblique opener, 
built around a looped three-second sample of 
drummer Phil Selway, who cited DJ Shadow as 
an inspiration (Shadow would later end up 
DJing on the OK Computer tour). The mesh of 
rock and electronics was at once reminiscent 
of Zooropa-era U2 and indicative of new 
directions. Initially titled Last Night An Airbag 
Saved My Life, in reference to both the 1983 
disco track Last Night A DJ Saved My Life and 
a punning headline Yorke had seen in an AA 
manual, it captured the mood of baleful 
euphoria and confusion which would run 
through the entire album. 

SUBTERRANEAN 

HOMESICK ALIEN 

Originally titled Uptight, a reflective pause 
amid all the tension. Yet despite the title's 
nod to Bob Dylan and Jonny Greenwood's 
spiralling, Pink Floyd-like guitar, Yorke cited 
Miles Davis's 1970 jazz-fusion classic Bitches 
Brew [Fig. 1] as inspiration - he'd 
been playing the album 
"endlessly", its sonic detail and 
sense of space making a major 
impression: "You're never quite 
sure where you are in it, it seems to 
be swimming around you." His 
lyrical reverie ("Up above, aliens 
hover") was sparked by finding 
himself alone at night on a country 
road after his car hit a pheasant. 



Fig. 1: Jazz kingpin 
Miles Davis, master 
of‘sonic detail’. 


EXIT MUSIC (FOR A FILM) 

A gripping evocation of romantic love which 
starts out as a simple acoustic ballad before 
unfolding into a controlled chaos of fuzz-bass 
and swarming samples. One of two songs 
written prior to the recording at 
Canned Applause, it was originally 
commissioned for the end credits 
of Baz Luhrmann's flashy 
cinematic Shakespeare update, 

Romeo + Juliet. The subject 
matter struck an immediate chord 
with Yorke who had seen the 1968 
Franco Zeffirelli version as an 
impressionable 13-year-old. "I just 
couldn't believe why [they] 6 id n't 
run away together. Romeo should 
have... jumped out of the window and eloped 
with her!" 

LET DOWN 

According to Yorke, a song about doing 
nothing: "Andy Warhol once said that he 

could enjoy his own boredom. Let 
Down is about that." [Fig. 2] It's also 
one of the band's most affecting 
works, recorded at 3am in the 
ballroom at St Catherine's Court, 
with Jonny Greenwood's hypnotic 
guitar providing the counterpoint 
to a Yorke vocal which resonates 
with the disturbing "mental 
chatter" he later identified as the 
album's primary inspiration. 



Fig. 2: Andy Warhol, whose 
periods of inertia gave rise 
to Let Down. 


KARMA POLICE 

A later live favourite that grew out of a band 
in-joke. "When someone in the band behaved 
like an asshole, one of the others always said, 
The Karma Police is gonna get you," recalled 
Ed O'Brien, who also supplied the closing wall 
of feedback. Musically, its urgent backbeat 
and vaguely sinister air echoes The Beatles' 
Sexy Sadie. Yorke's paranoiac vocal may have 
sounded elliptical, but was intended as an 
explicit protest against corporate business. 
"This is a song against bosses," he claimed. 
"Fuck the middle management!" 

FITTER HAPPIER 

A list of phrases culled largely from self-help 
books Yorke had been reading and written 
during a three-month period of writer's block, 
this weirdly processed interlude was voiced 
not as some believed by physicist Stephen 
Hawking, but "Fred" - part of the 
speech function on Macintosh 
computers. Played just before the 
band came onstage for much of 
the OK Computer tour, it also 
featured in printed form on the 
album's poster campaign, 
prompting Ed O'Brien to 
comment: "I think that some 
people really... think we are some 
kind of health freaks." 


PARANOID ANDROID 

Post Creep, Radiohead's defining moment. First performed in Belgium in July 1996, while 
supporting Alanis Morissette later that summer at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center in 
upstate New York, it mutated into a 10-minute epic that concluded with Jonny Greenwood 
improvising on a Hammond organ and Yorke singing "The walls... the walls...". Taking a cue 
from The Beatles' Happiness Is A Warm Gun, once in the studio the band broke the song down 
into sections, working separately on the percussive opening, jagged central riff and operatic 
coda. Yorke, meanwhile, wrung every ounce of anguish from a lyric that meshed technological 
angst and scathing social observation - and provided the highlight of their now-legendary 
Glastonbury performance that summer. 

BEST BIT: The sudden, menacing shift in tone as Yorke delivers the peerless line, "Kicking, 
squealing Gucci little piggy." 

STRANGE BUT TRUE: According to Ed O'Brien, the band originally set out to write a song that 
connected Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and the Pixies. 


ELECTIONEERING 

A sign of Thom Yorke's increasing interest 
in global politics - and sly comment on the 
band's gruelling promotional schedule as 
documented in Grant Gee's tour film Meeting 
People Is Easy. The Beatles-like opening riff 
and clanking percussion kick-start the 
album's second half, while the expanded 
world-view, especially the No Logo-inspired 
references to the IMF and "voodoo 
economics", showed the distance Yorke had 
travelled from the tortured introversion of 
The Bends. 

CLIMBING UP THE WALLS 

Ed O'Brien felt the "gothical" atmosphere 
of Radiohead's most sinister track was the 
result of recording in the library at St 
Catherine's Court (Yorke later claimed the 
house was haunted). The stark percussion 
hints at Hail To The Thief's Krautrock 
influences and Yorke's lyrics evoke the 
troubled mind of a mass killer ("Open up 
your skull, I'll be there"), while the unnerving 
string coda was inspired largely by an interest 
in modern Polish composer Krzysztof 
Penderecki, whose works also feature on 
the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's 
The Shining. 

NO SURPRISES 

Thom Yorke introduced the rest of the band 
to this song in their dressing room in Oslo, 


78 Q 























































































,V.^QvQ^OaO>& #; 


DEAL WITH STURE BY 
BURYING IT/ thom yorke 


following a support gig to R.E.M. in the 
city on 3 August 1995. Later, with rewritten 
lyrics and a new glockenspiel melody, it was 
dubbed the album's "stadium-friendly" song 
by Colin Greenwood and demonstrated 
Radiohead's ability to marry melodic beauty 
to themes of anxiety and confusion, Yorke 
drawing parallels between landfill 
and personal crises. "That's how I 
deal with stuff," he later told an 
interviewer. "I bury it." The Grant 
Gee-directed video [Fig.3], which 
featured an increasingly 
distressed Thom Yqrke singing 
from within a fish bowl as it filled 
with water, encapsulated the 
album's theme of helplessness. 


Fig. 3: A ‘distressed’ 
Thom Yorke in the video 
for No Surprises. 


LUCKY 

Written and recorded in a single five-hour 
stint for the War Child charity in September 
1995. According to Thom Yorke the entire 
song was sparked by a weird, high-pitched 
chord Ed O'Brien played on his guitar during a 
soundcheck in Japan that summer. Heard 
during the song's opening, the 
noise adds a light-headed effect, 
accentuated by the choral 
samples and swooping guitar 
solo, both added by Jonny 
Greenwood. The first time Nigel 
Godrich had been billed as co¬ 
producer. Yorke later described 
Lucky as "the first mark on the 
wall" for OK Computer. 


B-SIDES_&_OTHER RECORDINGS 


THE TOURIST 

Written by Jonny Greenwood in response to 
seeing a group of tourists dash through a 
town in France, this was intended to be a song 
about the "speed you live your life with". 
Greenwood opted to perform the main 
melody on the Mellotron, a vintage keyboard 
that plays sounds recorded onto tape loops, 
Yorke added lyrics he wrote while on holiday 
in Prague, with the message to "slow down" 
particularly relevant to a band which had 
been touring the world for much of the 
previous 18 months, ■ruperthowe 


OK COMP LITER Producer: Nigel Godrich, 
Radiohead | Recorded: July 1996 - March 1997, Canned 
Applause, Oxfordshire; St Catherine’s Court, Bath | 
Released: 16 June 1997 


POLYETHYLENE (PARTS I & 7 ) 

This two-part curiosity, in which 
a brief acoustic opening abruptly 
gives way to angular stadium 
rock, might have made the cut 
on The Bends. 

AVAILABLE ON: PARANOID ANDROID 
SINGLE CDI (1997) 

PEARLY* 

One of the few Radiohead 
B-sides to feature in the band's 
live sets. The cryptic lyrics - 
a reflection on the power of 
"whiteness" in global culture - 
have been the focus of much 
debate among fans. 


AVAILABLE ON: PARANOID ANDROID 
SINGLE CDI (1997) 

A REMINDER 

Opening with a recording of 
announcements made at a 
Prague metro station, it taps the 
same mood of tourbus ennui as 
Let Down. Written by Yorke in a 
hotel room on a day when "there 
was just nothing to do at all". 

AVAILABLE ON: PARANOID ANDROID 
SINGLE CD2 (1997) 

MELATONIN 

Named after the hormone 
associated with the ageing 


process, but with Yorke adopting 
the voice of a parent who wishes 
death on anyone who stands in 
the way of his son. Its shifting 
rhythm presaged Kid A. 
AVAILABLE ON: PARANOID ANDROID 
CD2 (1997) 

MEETING IN THE AISLE 

Dated early attempt at 
instrumental electronica, 
with its dub bassline all-too- 
obviously influenced by The Orb 
and late-'90s recordings on the 
Warp label. 

AVAILABLE ON: KARMA POLICE 
SINGLE CDI (1997) 


LULL 

Notable for its looping, Byrds- 
like guitar, echoed by Jonny 
Greenwood on the xylophone. 
Contains the classic Yorke line, 
"There's nothing more dull than 
talking about yourself." 
AVAILABLE ON: KARMA POLICE 
SINGLE CDI (1997) 

PALO ALTO 

Inspired by a March 1996 date 
the band played in Palo Alto, a 
hi-tech boomtown at the heart 
of Silicon Valley, California, this 
vision of a beautiful yet sterile 
"city of the future" propelled by 


some R.E.M.-like chord changes 
and vicious Jonny Greenwood 
guitar work was known as OK 
Computer before being shelved. 
AVAILABLE ON: NO SURPRISES 
SINGLE CDI (1998) 

HOW I MADE MY MILLIONS 

Haunting piano refrain recorded 
by Yorke on a four-track at his 
home while girlfriend Rachel 
pottered around in the kitchen. 
He was persuaded to release it 
unaltered after playing the tape 
to the rest of the band. 
AVAILABLE ON: NO SURPRISES 
SINGLE CDI (1998) 


Colin Greenwood, Thom 
Yorke and Jonny Greenwood 
at St Catherine's Court, 

April 1997. 


KEN SHARP, REX, GETTY 
























































THE COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 



KID A 

[PARLOPHONE, 2000] 

When it all went a bit “Aphex Twin”. 


S uccess affects different people in different ways. For Thom 
Yorke, the sudden ubiquity of OK Computer robbed him, not 
only of his love for making music, but his ability to create it in 
the first place. The singer spent 1998 battling depression and writer’s 
block, the band soldiering on and struggling to decide whether they 
should relocate their mojo via three-minute rock songs or a leap 
into the unknown. Led by Yorke, the latter won out, the band feeling 
their way through Nigel Godrich-produced experimental sessions in 
Paris, Copenhagen, Oxford and Gloucestershire between January 
1999 and April 2000. The result was almost like starting over; 

10 tracks, no singles, few reference points from their immediate past, 
electronic textures, Yorke's voice as instrument rather than deliverer 
of lyrics, plus a sense of adventure that would hint at the future. It 
was also vindication: released in October 2000, Kid A would reach 
Number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic. 


EVERYTHING IN ITS 

RIGHT PLACE 

The first sign that their radical re-think might 
prove worthwhile, arriving after a year of 
fraught and largely fruitless rehearsals in 
Paris and Copenhagen. Written on Thom 
Yorke's new baby grand piano but recorded 
using sparse electronic instrumentation, its 
melodic simplicity and computer-processed 
vocals set Kid A's aesthetic template. 
Originally, Yorke thought his repetitive "woke 
up sucking a lemon" lyrics "really silly" but 
listening to it afterwards realised that, 
subconsciously, it pointed towards his own 
mental state during the sessions. 

KID A 

Following the OK Computer tour, 

Yorke consumed the entire back 
catalogue of pioneering Sheffield 
electronica label Warp Records, 
home to Aphex Twin [Fig. i\ 

Autechre and Boards Of Canada. 

Their influence is all over Kid A, 
especially the clattering title track, 
with its oriental keyboard motifs 
and robotic vocals. Although 
his vocal was tweaked beyond 
recognition, Yorke insisted the 
lyrics were, "the most vicious I've 
ever sung". The frontman claimed the title 
came from his sequencer: for reasons he later 
forgot, he saved the track's opening melody 
under the program name "kiddae". 

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM 

The oldest track on Kid A: its riff was written 
by Yorke when he was 16 years old. Recording 
began in late 1997 when bass (played by 
Yorke) and drums were taped for a potential 
OK Computer B-side, only to be set aside for 
another two years. It was subsequently 
revived, under the working title Everyone, in 
late 1999, during sessions at Batsford Park in 
Gloucestershire, where discordant brass was 
added. Inspired by Yorke's jazz hero Charles 



Mingus [Fig.2], who would direct 
his musicians by asking them to 
"play like butterflies", Yorke and 
Jonny Greenwood asked their 
invited brass section to "play 
like a traffic jam". 

TREEFINGERS 

Kid A's most polarising track. 

Apparently a homage to ambient 
instrumental godfather Brian Eno, 
especially his work on Bowie's 
groundbreaking 1977 album Low, for some, 
Treefingers was the album's bravest sonic 
experiment, to others, Radiohead at their 
self-indulgent worst. What sounds like 
synthesizers is in fact guitar: Yorke recorded 
a 10-minute snatch of Ed O'Brien 
which he then manipulated 
through his sampler to create 
its hypnotic loops. In response to 
its critics, O'Brien argued that 
Treefingers "might not be a classic 
verse-chorus-verse-chorus, but 
it's still a song." 



Fig. 2: jazz hero Charles 
Mingus, playing Tike 
a butterfly’. 


Fig. i; Aphex Twin, 
whose influence is 
‘all over’ Kid A. 


OPTIMISTIC 

Optimistic was the album's first 


glimpse of "traditional" Radiohead - driven 
by O'Brien and Greenwood's guitars, with 
Yorke in classic falsetto mode. Like How To 
Disappear Completely, the lyrics were 
autobiographical: its chorus of, "You can try 
the best you can/The best you can is good 
enough" were the regular words of 
encouragement from Yorke's partner during 
his post-OK Computer depression. Issued in 
America as a radio-only promo, it became 
their biggest US hit since Creep, reaching 
Number 10 on Billboard's Modern Rock Chart. 
O'Brien put its appeal down to Stateside FM 
stations' radio compression, which made it 
sound "like an American rock song". 

IN LIMBO 

Originally titled Lost At Sea, In Limbo took 
over nine months to finish, the 
result striking a balance between 
"old Radiohead" (notably the 
melancholic guitar arpeggios of 
OK Computer) and the creative 
sound-manipulation using studio 
gizmos ProTools and Cubase that 
would define their new direction. 
Yorke's lyrics continue the album's 
themes of loss and lack of direction 
- he finds himself adrift in "Lundy, 
Fastnet, Irish Sea", areas between 
Great Britain and Ireland in the 
BBC Shipping Forecast. 

IDIOTEQUE 

When Jonny Greenwood compiled a DAT tape 
sampling passages from a rare 1976 album of 
early electronic music, Yorke thought 
sections of it "absolute genius" and began 
cutting up his favourite passage, a snippet of 
Mild und Leise by American "computer- 
music" composer Paul Lansky, to create 
Idioteque. Its up-tempo dance foundations 
marked another sizeable shift away from 
their guitar-based roots, also contrasting 
sharply with Yorke's apocalyptic lyrics about 
a coming ice age. The concept, explained 
Yorke, was to create the feeling of a James 


HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY 

Kid A's finest track was also the most succinct articulation of the adverse effects OK 
Computer's success had on Yorke. Written in 1998 and initially titled How To Disappear 
Completely And Never Be Found, it was inspired by Yorke's stage fright prior to a show at the 
Royal Dublin Showgrounds the previous June (hence the reference to Dublin's River Liffey). 
When Yorke rang Michael Stipe for assistance, the R.E.M. frontman would unwittingly help out 
with the lyrics. "I said, I cannot cope with this," explained Yorke. "[Stipe 7said, Pull the shutters 
down and keep saying, I'm not here, This is not happening." Yorke cut a rough demo, then 
passed it to Jonny Greenwood, who devised its haunting string arrangements, played by the 
Orchestra Of St John's. A popular encore to this day, Yorke has since praised the track as "the 
most beautiful thing we ever did". 

BEST BIT: The Orchestra Of St John's sweeps in at 2.19. Radiohead subsequently donated 
£20,000 from their July 2001 concert in Oxford's South Park to the OSJ. 

STRANGE BUT TRUE: Though he helped inspire the song, Michael Stipe would later cite it as a 
direct influence on his own Disappear from R.E.M.'s Reveal (2001). 


80 Q 




























































































Going underground: 
Radiohead adorn the 
walls of London's Bank 
tube station, 2000. 



MICHAEL STIPE SAID, 
L THE SHUTTERS DOWN 
AND PRETEND IT'S NOT 
HAPPENING.' THOMYORKE 


1 

I 

g 

1 


Brown or hip hop record full of "the 
things that freakyou out, the most 
worrying images you could have." 

MORNING BELL 

Among Kid A's most memorable 
and disturbing lyrics was Morning 
Bell's "cut the kids in half" refrain 
("Extremely violent," agreed Yorke). 

Written, like much of the album, by 
assembling cut-up scraps of lyrics 
pulled at random from a hat 
(a method previously used by David Bowie in 
the mid-VOs), Yorke almost lost the song 
after the original Mini-disc demo was wiped 
during an electric storm. Five months later, 


Morning Bell mysteriously came 
flooding back to him as he was 
falling asleep on a long-distance 
flight. Two versions were recorded 
over a 12-month period but 
released in reverse order. Kid A's is 
the second, more danceable take. 

MOTION PICTURE 

SOUNDTRACK 

Just missing inclusion on 
OK Computer, Motion Picture 
Soundtrack was first performed by Yorke on 
acoustic guitar as early as 1996. It eventually 
underwent a "Walt Disney" makeover, played 
instead on funereal harmonium with layers of 


sampled harp. Yorke's "see you in the next life" 
echoes Morrissey's final farewells in The 
Smiths' Asleep and Death Of A Disco Dancer 
[Fig.3], while a fourth verse beginning "Beautiful 
angel/Pulled apart at birth" was dropped 
from the final take altogether. A potentially 
orthodox closer, it still lapses into weirdness 
thanks to the false ending followed by a 
minute's silence, a strange instrumental 
reprise then two more minutes' silence. 

A suitably disconcerting finale, hsimon goddard 


Kl D A Producer: Nigel Godrich, Radiohead | Recorded: 
January 1999 - April 2000, Medley Studios, Copenhagen; 
Studio Guillaume Tell, Paris; Batsford Park, Glocs; 
Radiohead HQ, Oxford | Released: 2 October 2000 



Fig. 3: The Smiths, an 
inspiration on Motion 
Picture Soundtrack. 



Q 81 






































THE COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 


TALKING 'HEAD 

An enigmatic rock band from Oxford, by some of those who know them well. 


MICHAEL STIPE 

R.E.M. singer. Friend and 
confidante of Thom Yorke. 

“I honestly don’t know the 
first time I heard them, but 
they feel like they’ve been 
in my life forever. I once 
said Radiohead are so good 
they scare me. That’s very 
generous. They are a 
fucking great band, though, 
I’ll give them that. The 
music that I mostly listen 
to doesn’t have vocals and 
if it does have vocals, it’s 
sung in another language 
that I don’t understand. So 
I don’t really like singers 
that much. When I find 
one that really moves me, 
that’s saying something. 

I suppose as people we share 
a curiosity about things. 
Certainly an attitude about 
things. Sonically, In 
Rainbows moved me the 
first time I heard it. And 
it gets richer and richer. 
That’s one of the things 
about Radiohead - it’s not 
as if you hear something 
and then you’re tired of 
it by the third listen. It 
keeps growing and growing 
and growing. They’re 
so unafraid in so many 
ways and that’s to be 
super-admired.” 


GEORGE MONBIOT 

Author, environmentalist, 
partner-in-activism. 

“There are a lot of musicians 
who get involved in politics, 
but most get themselves in 
some really contradictory 
positions. Brian Eno and 
Thom Yorke are the two who 
know what they’re talking 
about, and it’s because they 
think very hard about the 
issues before opening their mouths. Thom and I are 
both very interested in climate change issues and 
anti-nuclear issues. In 2003, we went to an anti-war 
demonstration together at Fairford, the RAF base in 
Gloucestershire, because we were both passionately 
interested in trying to stop the Iraq War. I was 
impressed on that occasion by how hands-on Thom 
was. When Bob Geldof and Bono campaign, they’re 
always on the stage, one step removed from the 
public. Thom and I just turned up with the punters 
and mixed in with the crowds. He’s prepared to get his 
hands dirty and to be involved with people who are 
trying to achieve the same things, even though 
everyone wants a piece of him, and it’s that humility 
that marks him out.” 


PAUL Q KOLDERIE Pablo Honey co-producer. 

“Sean [Slade, production partner ]and I went to the 
UK looking for work. Our manager knew Nick 
Gatfield, who was the head of EMI. He had this band 
with three guitar players and they were trying to get 
their guitars loud in the mix. He played us a couple of 
songs. I thought, Wow, the guy has a great voice. 

“They were obviously intelligent, cool guys. Thom 
was leader by default, just because he had such strong 
opinions. There were times when he put his foot 
down. But he wasn’t an autocrat, he would listen, 
there was a democracy. They were obviously friends, 
too, and they wanted to stay friends. 

“We recorded Creep just before lunch one day 
when we were in the weeds with Inside My Head, 
which the label thought could be a single. With that 
in the can, it was tough to finish the rest of the album. 
Ultimately nobody’s really that happy with it. We 
were struggling to do the best we could at the time. 
But I knew if they could get off the runway with this 
record, they had a chance to be a fantastic band.” 


Radiohead with Sean 
Slade (left) and Paul Q 
Kolderie (fourth left). 


HUMPHREY LYTTELTON 

Veteran jazz trumpeter. As heard on 
Amnesiac's Life In A Glasshouse. 

“Jonny Greenwood wrote to me saying, 

You may think this is awful cheek, but 
we’ve got this track that we’re having 
difficulty with. We met up in the BBC 
canteen, and because I knew they were 
sensitive about being dubbed gloomy 
I was hesitant in saying the feel of it 
would be New Orleans funeral music. 

I suggested a Fouis Armstrong version 
of St James Infirmary Blues, which is very 
much in that vein and he said, That might 
be it. I turned up with my band and we just 
blew for seven hours with a couple of tea 
breaks. Every now and then Radiohead 
disappeared into the control room. We saw 
them waving their arms about and in the 
end, my chops were sagging, and I said, 
Genuinely, I think this is it, we’ve got it. 
Thom had spent quite a lot of time 
standing on his head in the little booth 
- or at least he went into positions of 
meditation - and he said to me, I think 
so... we’ll have something to eat and then 
do some more. I said, No, we will not!” H 


82 Q 





















































































THE_COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 


John Leckie 
(centre) with 
Radiohead, 1994 


JOHN LECKIE Producer, The Bends. 

“I love the album but by the end of the sessions I felt devastated. Without telling me, the 
band sent copies of the mastertapes to the States to be mixed by the Americans who 
produced Pablo Honey It was the first time it had happened to me. After 100 days’ work 
I felt like I’d given birth to a dozen babies and had them all taken away. I wasn’t even invited 
to the final playback. The band chose me as producer because I did the first Magazine 
album, Real Life, which they were all big fans of. I suggested we use the Manor studio in 
Oxfordshire but they said that was ‘too rock’n’roll’, and went for Mickey Most’s RAK studio 
in London, where we worked solidly for nine weeks. Thom would be there when the studio 
opened at 9 o’clock, working on his own at the piano before the others turned up at 12. After 
that the band went off on a tour of the Far East. When they came back they weren’t happy 
with a lot of what we’d done at RAK so they decided they would use the Manor after all. 
After that I went to Abbey Road to start mixing. I heard later the band said it was like the 
schoolteacher had left the room. Maybe it was an age thing. I was 20 years older than them. 
They felt more comfortable with RAK’s assistant engineer, this young guy, Nigel Godrich.” 


CHRIS 
HOPEWELL 

Video director for 
ThereThere. 

“Thom Yorke had 
an idea of being a 
character in one of the 
little stories you get in 
Bagpuss. A cross 
between that and a Grimms fairy tale. Once 
I heard that, any idea of having people 
playing instruments or mouthing the 
lyrics went straight out the window. I sent 
the band some postcards by a Victorian 
gentleman called Mr Potter who had his 
own museum of stuffed animals in weird 
situations, like kittens at a wedding, and 
Thom loved it. We shot the opening in 
a tiny wood near Bristol where I used to go 
mountain-biking and the rest was done in 
the studio with logs we brought in. We had 
Thom there for three days, which he was 
quite happy about because he had so many 
press conferences to do. To get the jerky 
movement he had to do everything at one 
third the speed, but he did it amazingly. 
He’d really rehearsed it. I know they think 
it’s one of their better videos, though I have 
to say most of the success is down to the 
track being such a beautiful, almost 
cinematic piece of music. We were 
approached by ad agencies to do similar 
stuff afterwards, but it meant too much 
to me to bastardise it with some product.” 



GRANT GEE 

Film-maker behind 
Meeting People Is Easy. 

“Meeting People Is 
Easy was never 
commissioned as a full- 
length documentary 
I was asked to film 
Radiohead doing three 
days of press for OK Computer at a hotel in 
Barcelona on the strength of a video I made 
for a band called Spooky [early-’gos dance 
act]. It was 1997, and a turning point for 
them. I think they were scared and excited 
about how big they had become and they 
wanted protection from the cameras; 
someone to turn the camera on the 
journalists for once. Five months later I got 
a call asking if I wanted to go out to New 
York with them, and that’s how the project 
progressed, in short spurts on the OK 
Computer tour. The tour is famously 
the one that nearly broke the band, but 
I didn’t sense that, because I had nothing 
to compare it to. They weren’t happy, but 
I don’t think I would have been happy 
answering the same questions day after 
day. I’ve worked with the band once since 
Meeting People Is Easy, a film of them 
playing Kid A songs in Air Studios, but 
they hated it and it was canned. I think they 
thought it was too conventional. I’d happily 
work with them again, though -1 love the 
webcast stuff they’ve been doing recently.” 




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THE COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 



AMNESIAC 


[PARLOPHONE, 2001] 


Kid A’s more outgoing “twin” brother. 


R eleased eight months after Kid A, Amnesiac offered a different 
perspective on the same agonising recording sessions. While 
the former was a coherent statement of their new, electronica- 
influenced approach, Amnesiac, with its rough edges and flashes of 


predecessor’s relentlessly sombre mood. Some bands might have 
lined up the tracks for B-sides or kicked them about for another few 
years; then again few bands have something as monumental as 
Pyramid Song or Like Spinning Plates in the filing cabinet. 


PACKT LIKE SARDINES IN 

A CRUSHD TIN BOX 

Radiohead considered Kid A and Amnesiac to 
be "twins separated at birth", a view this 
opening track only confirmed. Metal cooking 
pots clank, computers groan and stutter, and 
the influence of Kid A touchstones Aphex 
Twin and Autechre is clear. Yorke's weary 
lyric (memorably: "I'm a reasonable man/Get 
off my case") apparently came to him while 
watching "old people, and children" in a 
Parisian park. 

PULK/PULL REVOLVING DOORS 

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland [Fig. 1] was 
one of the odder influences on Amnesiac, 
specifically the sequence in which Alice 
arrives in a hall of locked doors. Says Yorke: 

"I was in that corridor, mentally, for six 
months... every door I opened, it was like, 
dreading opening it." The nightmare unfolds 
with something of the circular horror of Pink 
Floyd's Brain Damage. Instead of demented 
laughter and "the lunatic is on the grass" we 
get vocals mangled by the studio's Au totuner 
gizmo: "There are sliding doors... 
and there are secret doors." 

YOU AND WHOSE 

ARMY? 

Yorke was an early adopter where 
disillusionmen-t with New Labour 
was concerned. Amnesiac's 
bleakest track was recorded before 
9/11 or the Iraq war, and yet it 
concerned "someone who is 






Fig. 1: Alice in 
Wonderland. Thom 
Yorke’s a fan. 


elected into power by people, and 
then blatantly betrays them, just 
like Blair did". Although framed as 
a challenge ("Come on if you think 
you can take us all on"), the mood 
is defeated but serene. Its fuzzy, 
narcoleptic sound was partly 
achieved by wrapping the 
microphones in eggboxes. 

I MIGHT BE WRONG 

One departure from Kid A was that 
Radiohead were occasionally happy to 
present themselves as a rock band, although 
here the dirty riffing recalls Nirvana as played 
by robots. The lyric apparently documents a 
"complete crisis point" in Yorke's life, partly 
caused by the baggage of past relationships 
and coinciding with an incident when the 
singer, strolling on a beach, looked back and 
spotted an apparition in his house. 

KNIVES OUT 

The kinship between Knives Out and earlier 
anthems No Surprises and Street Spirit (Fade 
Out) perhaps explain its agonising 
gestation, although Ed O'Brien's 
internet diary reveals The Smiths 
as the inspiration for its cascading 
guitar parts. According to Yorke, 

"it took 373 days to be arse-about- 
face enough to realise it was 
alright the way it was." His 
cannibalism theme ("Squash his 
head/Put him in the pot") was, 
however, a relatively late addition. 


SOlllTIfl S f R ft SfitB PlflHfl 


Fig. 2: Naomi Klein’s No 
Logo, a key inspiration. 


MORNING BELL/AMNESIAC 

Slowed to funereal pace, Morning Bell/ 
Amnesiac was harder to love than the Kid A 
version. It was actually recorded first, and 
later rediscovered. Says Yorke, "We'd launch 
ideas off and about halfway through them I'd 
suddenly start screaming, This is bollocks! 
Stop the tape." Its inclusion here was 
intended to convey "a recurring dream". 

DOLLARS & CENTS 

Published in 2000, Naomi Klein's anti¬ 
globalisation polemic No Logo [Fig. 2] 
so influenced Radiohead that they 
briefly considered it as a working 
title for Kid A. Yorke, in particular, 
hardened in his disgust for how 
capitalism reduced people to 
"pixels on a screen". Featuring 
what the singer admitted were 
"gibberish" lyrics on that theme, 
thisjuddering track was modelled 
on the Krautrock improvisations of 
'70s German band Can. 


PYRAMID SONG 

The clue is in the title: Pyramid Song had its genesis in a visit by Yorke to an Egyptian art 
exhibition during a two-week sojourn in Copenhagen. According to Colin Greenwood, it was 
the image of "people being ferried across the river of death" that most affected the singer, 
whose lyrics imagine "going to heaven in a little row boat" accompanied by "black-eyed 
angels". The track's chord progression was hammered out on the baby grand Yorke had 
recently bought in rejection of Radiohead's guitar-led past. Yet all this barely hints at the 
complex pocket-symphony that Pyramid Song became. Combining the muscular jazz of 
Charles Mingus with quasi-Eastern strings overdubbed in Oxfordshire's 12th-century 
Dorchester Abbey, its giddy brilliance is mesmerising. 

BEST BIT: That first, ghostly "Ooh-ooh-ooo-ooo-oooh" from Yorke, which prefigures the main 
orchestral theme. 

STRANGE BUT TRUE: The squirming sonic undertow is produced by Jonny Greenwood's ondes 
Martenot, a weird Theremin-like device invented in 1928. 


HUNTING BEARS 

A haiku-like interlude, with a solitary Thom 
Yorke on electric guitar and sequenced bass. 
The bear motif reflects children's fables and 
the band's new logo, the "modified bear". 
Yorke has attributed the latter to "a deep 
paranoia of genetic engineering... you know, 
creating monsters, only to awaken one 
morning to the terrible truth that there is 
nothing at all you can do to stop them." 

LIKE SPINNING PLATES 

Many of the recording techniques for Kid A/ 
Amnesiac were suggested by what Thom Yorke 
had read of The Beatles' studio experiments in 
Ian MacDonald's Revolution In The Head. For 
Like Spinning Plates, the band took the then- 
unreleased I Will (it later turned up on Hail To 
The Thief) and played it backwards. Then Yorke 
wrote new words that seemed to replicate 
those backwards sounds when sung normally. 

LIFE IN A GLASSHOUSE 

Although written back in 1997, the band 
struggled to make this work until Jonny 
Greenwood hit on approaching 79-year-old 
jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton to help 
out. The results are a bizarre counterpoint 
to Yorke's impressive rant against tabloid 
journalism. The line "she is papering the 
windowpanes" references a story he heard 
about a celebrity driven to covering her 
windows with newspapers. The "full version", 
on the first CD of the Knives Out single, 
containsa little extra skronking. brobfearn 


AMNESIAC Producer; Nigel Godrich, Radiohead | 
Recorded: January 1999 - late 2000, Medley Studios, 
Copenhagen; Studio Guillaume Tell, Paris; Batsford Park, 
Glocs; Radiohead HQ, Oxford | Released: 4 June 2001 


86 Q 




















































































'WE'D LAUNCH IDEAS 
AND HALFWAY THROUGH 
THEM I'D SCREAM, THIS IS 
BOLLOCKS! 


THOM YORKE 


“ 8 &*'* j 


Thom York©, 2001: his 
p're-ln Rainbows attempts 
to d istributeRa d i oh e a d's 
mtjsic w^re^nore basic. 




B-SIDES_&_OTHER RECORDINGS 


THE AMAZING SOUNDS 

OF ORGY 

Ed O'Brien wrote approvingly 
of the freedom Radiohead found 
in working on sounds as a 
"collective" in the manner of 
Massive Attack. The comparison 
is writ large in this trip-hop 
influenced track concerning, 
according to Yorke, "an orgy 
of violence", with a prescient 
reference to "the day the banks 
collapsed on us". 

AVAILABLE ON: PYRAMID SONG 
CDI (2001) 

TRANS-ATLANTIC DRAWL 

Imagine an alternative future in 
which Radiohead, emboldened 
by the American success of 
Creep, opted to go grunge. They 


might still be cranking out music 
along the lines of this gonzo 
Stooges pastiche, which cuts 
jarringly to a celestial coda of 
weird synth drones. 

AVAILABLE ON: PYRAMID SONG 
CDI (2001) 

FAST-TRACK 

More queasy trip-hop, whose 
smoky atmosphere, jazzy 
drumming and chopped 
up vocals wouldn't be out of 
place on a DJ Shadow album. 
Although Ed O'Brien's blog 
noted a "hyperactive" Thom 
Yorke "singing along" to this, 
the final version buries his words 
deep in the mix. 

AVAILABLE ON: PYRAMID SONG 
CD2 (2001) 


KINETIC 

The pulsing Kinetic is driven by 
its Kraftwerkian vocoder sample, 
while Thom Yorke's dreamy 
contributions seem to shuffle 
along in a daze. It's reputed to 
have been originally earmarked 
for Kid A, and eventually 
replaced by Idioteque. 

AVAILABLE ON: PYRAMID SONG 
CD2 (2001) 

CUTTOOTH 

Only supreme confidence or 
utter bloody-mindedness can 
explain why Radiohead tossed 
this minor masterpiece away 
on a B-side. Ed O'Brien's blog 
suggests that Krautrockers Neu! 
provided the blueprint for its 
delicious linear chug. Rolling 


piano builds throughout, 
while scratchy rhythms provide 
extra colour. The line rhyming 
"tongue tied" and "skinned 
alive" later resurfaced on Hail 
To The Thief's Myxomatosis. 
AVAILABLE ON: KNIVES OUT 
CDI (2001) 

WORRYWORT 

While much of Kid A/Amnesiac 
mined the dissonant end of 
the Warp label's electronica, 
Worrywort is in a parallel 
tradition of fluttering, blissed- 
out sound. Curiously upbeat, the 
lyrics have the flavour of a self- 
help text (don't dwell on past 
mistakes, think of the fun you 
could have), culminating in the 
line: "It's such a beautiful day". 


AVAILABLE ON: KNIVES OUT 
CD2 (2001) 

FOG 

Fog started life as a concise 
piano ballad, Alligators In The 
New York Sewers, which Yorke 
unveiled at a gig in Israel in July 
2000. It was, he admitted, "kind 
of a silly song". But while it does 
detail a ridiculous horror film 
scenario - "And the fog comes 
up from the sewers/And glows 
in the dark" - the final version is 
a model of measured drama, 
layering creepy keyboards, 
tambourine and, finally, a 
clanging guitar riff over its 
creaking bassline. Undoubtedly 
a "lost" classic. 

AVAILABLE ON: KNIVES OUT CD2 (2001) 












































HAILTOTHETHIEF 


[PARLOPHONE, 2003] 


A “shiny pop record”. In Thom Yorke’s head, at least. 


P utting the traumatic Kid A/Amnesiac experience behind them, 
for their sixth album Radiohead travelled to Hollywood. “It was 

like a beach vacation,” recalled Thom Yorkeofthe sessions at 

Ocean Way studios in Los Angeles. Most of the album was completed 
m just two weeks. Yet despite Yorke’s claim that it was a “shiny pop 
record”, its title (widely read as a comment on George W Bush 
stealing the 2000 election) and dense, allusive songs betrayed a mind 
still buzzing with angst and insight, whether it be from the political 
iall-out of 9/11 or the joys of fatherhood. Several songs would be 
premiered - and fine-tuned - on a pre-album tour of Portugal in 2002. 


2 + 2 = 5 (THE LUKEWARM) 

A decisive shift away from Amnesiac's 
abstract electronica, this opens with the 
sound of Jonny Greenwood plugging in his 
guitar at Ocean Way studios and builds to 
an anthemic rock finale worthy of The Bends. 
It also signposted the album's lyrical themes, 
the vision of an Orwellian, post-9/ll world 
where nothing adds up inspired by Yorke's 
compulsive tracking of Radio 4 news bulletins 
- where he first heard the phrase Hail To The 
Thief, originally used to describe 19th-century 
US President John Quincy Adams [Fig. 1]. 

SIT DOWN. STAND UP 

(SNAKES & LADDERS) 

Premiered, like much of the album, during a 
summer tour of Portugal, and originally 
written around the time of OK Computer. 

The sombre mood reflected Yorke's horror 
at the mid-'90s genocide in Rwanda, though 
the "Look into the jaws of hell" refrain was 
taken from the book of Common Prayer, 
a line Yorke said he felt "compelled" to use 
in a song. 

SAIL TO THE MOON 

(BRUSH THE COBWEBS OUT 

OF THE SKY) 

Amid all the politics and soul- 
searching, a moment of starry- 
eyed reflection. Yorke confessed 
his life had changed radically since 
the birth of his son Noah in 
February 2001 and the line "You'll 
build an ark and sail us to the 
moon" was inspired directly by 



Fig. i: US President John 
Adams - the original 
‘thief of the title. 


thoughts of his son's future. 

The magic didn't come easily, 
though. Jonny Greenwood 
notes that Yorke's original 
sketch "had different chords 
and only half an idea". It was 
Phil Selway who helped finalise 
the arrangement. 

BACKDRIFTS 

(HONEYMOON IS OVER) 

Its title inspired by the aftermath of a 
snowstorm Yorke witnessed in Japan, this 
is a direct descendant of the Kid A/Amnesiac 
sessions, balancing a processed rhythm 
track and delicate piano melody. Yorke's 
vocal continues the album's themes of 
social/political impotence and, perhaps 
preparing for accusations the band might 
be running short on energy or ideas, delivers 
the line "We're damaged goods" with 
particular relish. 

GO TO SLEEP 

(LITTLE MAN BEING ERASED) 

"We wanted to make the sort of sounds 
thatgetyou up in the morning 
and... have a positive energy," 

Yorke noted of the sessions in 
California. "It was the most fun 
we've had in the studio." A mood 
reflected in the upbeat urgency 
of a song that collides West Coast 
folkstrummingwith a pin-balling 
Jonny Greenwood solo achieved 
by running his guitar through a 
randomising computer program. 



Fig. 2: An ondes 
Martenot, as used by 
Jonny Greenwood. 


THE RE THERE (the boney king of nowher e) 

With its layered guitar parts and epic structure. Hail To The Thief's first single seemed to mark 
a return to the visionary rock of OK Computer. But there were added complexities, from 
Yorke's invocation of a mysterious siren "singing you to shipwreck" to the Krautrock-inspired 
drumming he identified as a homage to Can's landmark 1971 album Tago Mago. First performed 
uring a webcast while the band were recording Kid A, the lyrical warnings against temptation 
also took on added resonance thanks to the recent birth of Yorke's son (its subtitle is taken 
from a song in an episode of'70s children's animation Bagpuss) and a brilliant stop-animated 
video directed by Chris Hopewell which saw Yorke trapped in a fairy-tale forest. 

BEST BIT: The Jonny Greenwood solo four minutes in - one of his very best. 

STRANGE BUT TRUE: When Thom Yorke heard the final mix at the band's studio in 
Oxfordshire, he was moved to tears. 


WHERE I END AND YOU 

BEGIN (THE SKY IS FALLING INI 

Radiohead songs typically display complex 
DNA and this reflection on anxieties personal 
and political is no exception. Dedicated to 
Jeanne Loriod, an early performer on Jonny 
Greenwood's favourite instrument the ondes 
Martenot [Fig.2], it references on both Joy 
Division (the ominous bassline) and children's 
nursery story Chicken Licken, in which a flock 
of deluded poultry are lured into a fox's den - 
a favourite of Yorke and his brother Andrew 
when they were boys. 

WE SUCKYOUNG 
BLOOD (YOURTIME IS UP) 

Gothic reflection on Hollywood's 
parasitic relation to youth. The 
funereal pace and handclaps were 
inspired by Charles Mingus's 1963 
jazz protest Freedom and sound 
suitably gloomy given the morbid 
theme. Yet Yorke also insisted it 
shouldn't be taken too seriously: "That fast 
bit on the piano, its ridiculous. You can't get 
chin-scratchy about that. It makes me laugh." 

THE GLOAMING 

(SOFTLY OPEN OUR MOUTHS IN THE COLD) 

A song that dates back to the summer of 

2002 when each band member received a 
package from Yorke containing three CD-R 
discs filled with sketches labelled Episcoval, 
Hold Your Prize and The Gloaming - "a very 
out of fashion word for twilight" as Yorke 
put it. Touted as a title track for the album, 
it remains more a mood piece than a 
conventional song, with Yorke conjuring a 
nightmare vision of being sucked down "to 
the other side" over twitching electronica 
programmed by the Greenwood brothers. 

I WILL (NO MAN'S LAND) 

Yorke has described this hymn-like reflection 
on the US military's bombing of the Amiriyah 
air raid shelter in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War 
(which killed over 400 civilians) as "The 
angriest thing I've ever written." The shortest 
song on an album where the band were 
determined to keep it tight. "If we recorded a 
track that stretched over three minutes and 
50 seconds," said Colin Greenwood, "we'd 
say. Oh fuck, we've buggered it then." 

A PUNCH-UP AT A WEDDING 

(NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO) 

There might be an expansive feel to the 
opening piano chords here, but feelings 
of unease become evident long before the 
distorted conclusion. While the bitter social 
observations ("You had to piss on our 
parade") hinge once more on Yorke's 
unsparing self-awareness and role as an 
outsider. "I hadn't realised how angry it all 
was until afterwards," he said when asked 














































































































about the album's underlying tensions. "It 
was like, Fucking hell... It wasn't intentional." 


SCATTERBRAIN 

(AS DEAD AS LEAVES) 


A WOLF AT THE DOOR 

(IT GIRL. RAG DOLL) 


MYXOMATOSIS (JUDGE, JURY 

& EXECUTIONER) 

Announced by a snarling synth riff, 
Myxomatosis features a narrator seemingly 
unable to make sense of his own experience. 
"Paranoid, miserable, that's me, isn't it? That's 
my job," said Yorke wryly when asked to 
comment on the song's ambivalent attitude to 
stardom. And while the title refers to the virus 
that decimated Britain's wild rabbit 
population in the '50s, Yorke insists it was 
chosen for how it sounds, not what it means: 
"The song is actually about mind control." 


Lilting number, which again reflects Yorke's 
intense monitoring of the news prior to 
recording, in particular his habit of walking 
in the countryside with a portable radio: "Out 
in the middle of nowhere, the media is really 
amplified - it's like being permanently on 
drugs." Hence the links between natural 
forces (wind, hail) and images of conflict 
(bullets). Elsewhere, the lyric about 
"Yesterday's headlines blown by the wind" 
derives from a passage in Thomas Pynchon's 
labyrinthine 1963 novel V, about the search 
for a mysterious vanished woman. 


This verbal outpouring from the Kid A 
sessions is, according to Yorke, "about fear 
- real or imagined". Inspired both by a ragga 
mix-tape the singer was given by a friend and 
his experience of coming close to "a complete 
nervous breakdown", it was the Beethoven- 
inspired waltz created by Jonny Greenwood 
that provided the catalyst: "Thom basically 
started shouting on top of it." ■ ruperthowe 


AMNESIAC Producer: Nigel Godrich, Radiohead | 
Recorded: Sept 2002-Feb 2003 at Ocean Way, Los 
Angeles; Radiohead HQ, Oxford | Released: 9 June 2003 


B-SIDES_&_OTHER RECORDINGS 



PAPERBAG WRITER 

Unexpectedly funky adjunct to 
the Hail To The Thief sessions, 
driven by a popping bassline and 
mambo rhythm. The title is an 
ironic reference to Yorke's 
Beatles fixation - as are the lush 
Abbey Road strings - though the 
lyrics read like the troubled 
frontman having a conversation 
with himself: "Take your armour 
off, you're not under attack." 
AVAILABLE ON: THERE THERE 
SINGLE (2003) 


WHERE BLUEBIRDS FLY 

Constructed around an Aphex 
Twin-like beat, which carries 
echoes of the electronic rhythm 
driving Sit Down. Stand Up, this 
wordless experiment finds Yorke 
choosing lyrics not for what they 
mean, but for how they sound. 
The band often used Where 
Bluebirds Fly as their intro music 
while touring Hail To The Thief in 
2002 and 2003. 

AVAILABLE ON: THERE THERE 
SINGLE (2003) 


I AM CITIZEN INSANE 

Pulsing electronic instrumental, 
its hazy, dreamlike harmonics 
reminiscent of ambient pioneers 
Boards Of Canada. The lack of a 
Yorke vocal means it feels a little 
like an unfinished sketch from 
the Kid A/Amnesiac era. 
AVAILABLE ON: GO TO SLEEP 
SINGLE (2003) 

GAGGING ORDER 

In contrast to the electronic 
out-takes used as B-sides on 


There There, a disarmingly 
simple and affecting song 
performed solo by Yorke on 
acoustic guitar. Originally titled 
Move Along (from the line, "Move 
along, there's nothing left to 
see"), it dates from the Kid A 
sessions - in his online diary for 
1999 Ed O'Brien recalls Yorke 
playing it to the band in the 
studio before continuing work 
on In Limbo. 

AVAILABLE ON: GO TO SLEEP 
SINGLE CD2 (2003) 


I AM A WICKED CHILD 

Originally performed during an 
internet broadcast in 2000, 
this has a loose, bluesy feel, 
accentuated by Jonny 
Greenwood's over-the-top 
harmonica and lines like "I am 
the Devil's son" and "I walk the 
crooked mile". Utterly out of 
character with the precision of 
their album work, but more 
intriguing for it. 

AVAILABLE ON: GO TO SLEEP 
SINGLE CD2 (2003) 















































REVOLUTION 


They’d already changed music. 
With In Rainbows, Radiohead 
changed the music industry 


over their parent label EMI in May 2007, 
had been more flexible in negotiating with 
the band. “We couldn’t move ahead with 
EMI because [Terra Firma head ]Guy Hands 
refused to discuss the [back]catalogue in any 
meaningful way,” Radiohead manager Bryce 
Edge told The Times in December 2007. 

The seeds of In Rainbows stemmed from 
a “philosophical conversation about the 
value of music” between Edge and co¬ 
manager Chris Hufford following 2003’s 
Hail To The Thief. In April 2007, at a band 
summit in Oxford, Edge and Hufford 
proposed releasing only the download and 
a deluxe boxset, but the band overruled 
them, arguing that many of its fans are 
neither downloaders nor elite collectors. 
The details were subsequently hammered 
out in a series of meetings. 

“The two parameters were: we’ve 
finished the record and we want people to 
hear it now; and we want everyone to get 
the music at the same time,” explained 
Edge. “The internet was the only way we 
could do that. But how do you value a 
download? So we had to offer the pay-what- 
you-want option, which became the story.” 

They moved quickly from idea to 
delivery. Two days after the album was 
mastered it was available for pre-order on 


the site. The financial infrastructure was 
already in place thanks to Waste. To 
ensure security and make sure the album 
downloaded quickly, they hired a private 
internet network; a collection of servers and 
connections that meant for most of the 
distance between Waste’s Oxford-based 
servers and the fan’s computer, the 
download effectively had a high-speed cable 
all to itself. Edge admitted this cottage- 
industry approach could have failed. 

“We had two servers struggling to sort 
the database stuff and the financial 
transaction,” he said. “We couldn’t have five 
million people downloading it because if 
too many people came on it just crashed.” 

On 8 November, Radiohead announced 
the release of a conventional CD through 
XL Recordings on New Year’s Eve. Thom 
Yorke confirmed that this had been a 
condition of doing the whole project. 

“It probably costs a small six-figure sum 
to handle the financial transactions, but 
that’s nothing compared to the overall 
sums changing hands,” says James 
Kirkham, director of digital marketing 
agency Holler, whose clients include Nike 
and Channel 4. “They’ve got all the royalties 
and all the rights, plus all those new names 
on their database. That’s unprecedented.” 


HOW DID THEY DO IT? 

On Monday 1 October, a message from 
Jonny Greenwood appeared on Radiohead’s 
website, Dead Air Space. “Hello everyone. 
Well, the new album is finished, and it’s 
coming out in 10 days. We’ve called it In 
Rainbows. Love from us all.” 

If the suddenness of the release was 
surprising, then the method of distribution 
was unprecedented. The 10-track album 
would be available to download from the 
website from 10 October, with users setting 
their own price, from nothing up to a 
maximum price of £99.99. It would also be 
available on 3 December as a £40 “discbox”, 
with bonus CD, vinyl discs, artwork and 
lyrics. “It’s the biggest example to date 
of a group at the height of its fame 
circumventing traditional record labels to 
deliver a major recording to consumers,” 
noted Fortune magazine. 

Radiohead had long been using the 
internet to their advantage. They had been 
broadcasting webcasts since 2002, while 
their Waste fanclub had developed into an 
online merchandise and ticketing site with 
a database of more than 300,000 fans. 

But releasing an album online was still a 
huge jump in their ambitions. It wouldn’t 
have happened if Terra Firma, who took 


90 Q 


































THE COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 







DID IT WORK? 

In Rainbows’ unique distribution and 
“charity box” model instantly became 
headline news. On the morning of 10 
October, everyone who cared was hearing it 
for the first time: for once, fans got it at the 
same time as file sharers or journalists. 

For all the fuss, it was ultimately a clever 
marketing exercise. Edge and Hufford 
admitted the pay*what-you-like download was 
a ploy to drive sales from the outset. “If we 
didn’t believe that when people heard the 
music they would want to buy the CD, then 
we wouldn’t do what we are doing,” says Edge. 

The strategy seems to have paid off. The 
physical album sold 44,602 copies in its first 
week in the UK - fewer than Kid A’s first- 
day sales of 55,000, but impressive given the 
music business’s current woes. The band 
haven’t revealed how many albums were 
downloaded or how much people paid for 
each download, but reports suggest that it 
averages out at around £3 per album. 

“Radiohead are the first major artist to 
realise the true value of monetising their 
fans’ social behaviour by allowing multiple 
choices of consumption,” says Terry 
McBride, manager of Dido and Avril 
Lavigne. “By letting the fans decide how 
they want to purchase they have walked 


away with more money from this than any 
previous release with EMI.” 

The ripples spread immediately. In 
November, US rapper Saul Williams 
released his Trent Reznor-produced album 
The Inevitable Rise & Fall Of Niggy Tardust 
online. Fans were given the option to 
download a medium-quality MP3 version 
for nothing or pay $5 for a high-quality 
version. “In the first three months we 
shifted 200,000 copies for free and 50,000 
paid for,” says Williams. “Everyone’s 


In Rainbowsjn Numbers 

9 days between album being announced 
and being made available to download 

45p transaction fee for anyone opting to 
pay for the download 

€ 2.93 average amount paid for 
download by fans worldwide, according 
to online pollster comScore 

15 number of people who paid the 
maximum price of €99.99 for the 
downloadable album 

44,602 first-week sales of In Rainbows 
physical CD in the UK (compared to 
112,000 for 2003's Hail To The Thief) 


learning from what they [Radiohead]did. 
The next attempt will be different again.” 

Also following Radiohead’s lead are 
The Charlatans, who released their single 
You Cross My Path for free via Xfm’s 
website in October 2007 and plan to do the 
same with their new album. “Physical sales 
are decreasing,” says Alan McGee, The 
Charlatans’ manager and ex-Creation 
Records boss. “The band will get paid more 
by more people coming to gigs, buying 
merchandise, publishing and sync fees [for 
appearing on ads and in films]. I believe it’s 
the future business model.” 

For Radiohead, the model isn’t quite that 
simple. According to Music Week, ticket and 
merchandise sales account for around 60 per 
cent of their income, with the remainder 
coming from record sales. But that 40 per cent 
is relatively high compared to their peers, as 
Radiohead tour less frequently than many 
other bands. While In Rainbows was a success 
on both a marketing and financial level, it’s 
not clear whether they’ll do the same again. 

“We’ve always said it’s an experiment in 
progress,” admitted Bryce Edge. “Any band 
worth their salt will work out what is right 
for them and give it a go. I’m not saying 
we’ve come up with a solution, but it seems 
to have a logic to it.” ® 


Q 91 




























THE COMPLETE_RADIOHEAD 



IN RAINBOWS 


[XL, 2007] 


Still revolutionary after all these years. 


T he headline-grabbing “charity box” approach to its online release 
and £40 discbox edition diverted attention away from the fact 
that In Rainbows was Radiohead’s most approachable album 
since OK Computer. This was partly down to Thom Yorke exorcising 
his experimental urges on 2006 solo album, The Eraser, an outlet for 
ideas that didn’t fit within Radiohead’s remit. Not that recording was 
free of trauma: it took 28 months, four studios and two producers to 
make. Early sessions with U2 associate Mark “Spike” Stent were 
unproductive. It was only when Nigel Godrich - initially deemed 
“too safe” - was brought back on board in October 2005 and sessions 
moved to Tottenham House, a stately home in Wiltshire, that In 
Rainbows began to gel. For once, even the band were satisfied with 
the results. “It’s the first record where I’m still listening to my six 
favourite songs,” said Jonny Greenwood. “That’s a good sign.” 


15 STEP 

Initially assembled on Yorke's 
laptop, the glitchy, 5/4 time 
introductory percussion echoed 
Kid A's sense of experimentation, 
but the arrival of Yorke's tuneful 
falsetto and deftly picked guitar 
lent the song a more carefree 
atmosphere. The track's surprise 
moment was supplied towards the 
end by a group of cheering children 
from Oxford's Matrix Music School 
& Arts Centre, handily close to the band's 
own studio, recorded by Colin Greenwood 
and Nigel Godrich. 

BODYSNATCHERS 

In Rainbows's most propulsive track, 
complete with motorik beat reminiscent of 
Krautrock pioneers Neu! and a wall of fuzzy 
guitars. Written in 2005 it took more than 
a year before the recording finally came right 
during the band's draughty two-month stay 
at Tottenham House. According to Ed O'Brien, 
Bodysnatchers reflected "the weird energy 
of the house", which was formerly a rehab 
centre for recovering heroin addicts. 

NUDE 

Written during the OK Computer sessions 
and occasionally performed live, Nude was 
originally titled Big Ideas (Don't Get Any). 
Yorke had previously found it uncomfortable 
to sing "because it was too feminine", but 
eventually grew to like it "because it brings 
out something in me." The studio recording 
of 2007 glided in on a cue on of ethereal 
strings and heavenly voices before settling 
into a gently hiccupping waltz-time groove. 

It sounded like a love song but wasn't, as the 
line "you'll go to hell for what your dirty mind 
is thinking" proved. 

I WEIRD FISHES/ARPEGGI 

| This song made its first public appearance 

% at the Ether Festival of experimental music 

\ on London's South Bank in 2005 where it was 



Fig. i: The late Nick 
Drake - his spirit hovers 
over Faust Arp. 


performed as a duet by Yorke and 
Jonny Greenwood. The final take, 
completed at the band's own 
studio in spring 2007, added 
another arpeggio guitar, some 
celeste from Greenwood, J, and 
a scampering drum part in which 
Phil Selway offered a pin-sharp 
impersonation of a drum machine. 

ALL I NEED 

Yorke's decision to put his voice 
centre stage was key to resolving the 
problems that beset the recording of the 
album and no track benefited from it 
more than this one, arguably Radiohead's 
most uncomplicated love song. Colin 
Greenwood's slow and stately fuzz bass 
and brother Jonny's string arrangement 

- scored, he claimed, to imitate white noise 

- were carefully positioned in the mix to 
leave plenty of space around Yorke's 
heartfelt vocal. 


FAUST ARP 

The ghost of Nick Drake [Fig. i] 
hovers over this track. The 
combination of intricately 
picked acoustic guitar and 
swelling cello recalled the sound 
palette of Drake's Bryter Layter, as 
did the restlessly shifting major- 
to-minor chords and abrupt 


Fig. 2: Longtime 
Radiohead producer 
Nigel Godrich. 


changes in rhythmic emphasis. One of the 
album's shortest tracks, coming in at just 
over two minutes, the grumpy tone of the 
lyrics - "I'm stuffed... I love you but enough 
is enough" etc - was belied by the apologetic 
tenderness of Yorke's delivery. His lyrics were 
edited down from "pages and pages" of notes. 

RECKONER 

What sounded like a roomful of rattling 
percussion, joined in due course by more 
arpeggiated acoustic guitar - In Rainbows's 
signature accompaniment - formed the 
prelude to Yorke's layered falsetto. A not- 
quite lament that changed shape over 
various sessions, the song's mood of fragile 
optimism was boosted by the arrival of Jonny 
Greenwood's strings later on, a warm blast 
of aural sunshine mirrored in the lyric, 
"Because we separate, it ripples our 
reflections in rainbows". 

HOUSE OF CARDS 

One of their most straightforward song 
structures, the arrangement here was built 
around a syncopated one-chord strum with 
woozy synths adding distant support. Yorke's 
languorous vocal stretched out like a cat on 
a bed while his lyric alluded darkly to wife¬ 
swapping parties: "Throw your keys in the 
bowl/Kiss your husband goodnight". The 
reverb effect on the vocal was captured 
by Nigel Godrich in one of the rooms in 
Tottenham House. 

VIDEOTAPE 

"Less is more" was a lesson learned during 
the recording of this melancholy piano tune 
at Godrich's London studio, The Hospital, 
in December 2006. With Yorke temporarily 
sent out of the room for being, in 
his words, "a negative influence", 
Jonny Greenwood and Godrich 
hacked away at a cluttered 
arrangement, creating a thing 
of desolate beauty that moved 
at glacial speed but packed 
a powerful emotional punch. 

Yorke admitted that with "all 
the nonsense" stripped away 
"it completely blew my mind". 



JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE 

The first song to be completed after Nigel Godrich [Fig. 2 ] came back on board, and the 
album's lead single. Its beauty lay in the contrast between the shuffling urgency of the 
instrumentation - a simple Unplugged-style arrangement of mainly acoustic guitar, bass and 
drums with a lofty blast of orchestral synths at the end - and the insistently dreamy repetition 
of the vocal melody. The key lines, "What's the point of instruments/Words are a sawn-off 
shotgun" hinted at the travails and self-doubt that preceded the making of this song and 
the album as a whole. 

BEST BIT: Yorke singing, "Come on and let it out" above a confusion of frantically busy guitars. 
STRANGE BUT TRUE: The lyrics were inspired by Yorke's fascination with binge drinkers in 
Oxford, partly born out of his own chronic inability to hold his drink. "Half a can of lager and 
Thom's gone," reported one associate. 


92 Q 























































































































Radiohead in 2007: 
laughing in the face 
of conventional 
release methods. 




'DISCBOX' EXTRA TRACKS 


MKI 

Minute-long intro to In Rainbows's bonus 
disc, only available as part of the boxset 
released two months after the original album 
was made available online [Fig.3]. More sound 
sketch or laptop doodle than fully formed 
piece, its atonal, swirling textures resolved at 
the end into a fragment of the piano figure 
from Videotape. 


Fishes and Faust Arp. The song's main 
arranger Jonny Greenwood fought for its 
inclusion but was overruled. 

MK2 

As with Mk I, this abstract, 60-second 
sound painting said a lot more about the 
circumstances in which many of the songs on 
In Rainbows began than it did about where 
they ended up. 


DOWN IS THE NEW UP 

Opens with a sturdy piano riff and charges off 
in several prog rock-ish directions thereafter, 
before fetching up in a weird, fake soul place, 
this track was a particular favourite of Thom 
Yorke's "because it's pretty radical". A shade 
too radical for In Rainbows was evidently the 
collective verdict. 


GO SLOWLY 

Hard to see why this didn't make 
it onto the A-list since its mixture 
of acoustic guitar, heavenly 
celestes and Yorke's dreamy 
falsetto locate it in an adjacent 
space musically to Weird 



Fig. 3: That limited- 
edition £40 In Rainbows 
boxset in full. 


LAST FLOWERS 

Originally recorded during the OK Computer 
sessions but never released, another version 
was shortlisted by Yorke for his solo album 
The Eraser - hence the band's feeling that it 
wasn't right, even in re-recorded form, for In 
Rainbows. Its lovely piano-led melody 

wouldn't have sounded out of place 
located right next to Karma Police 
on OK Computer. 

UP ON THE LADDER 

A thumping4/4 beat and a 
discordant guitar dominated a tune 
that, despite its airborne, synthy 


chorus and late-developing dub bassline, 
never quite shakes off its doom-laden 
atmosphere. Originally written for Kid A and 
performed live in 2002, it sounded like a 
ghost from Radiohead's recent past. 

BANGERS + MASH 

With its jerky, repetitive guitar riff and 
clattering drum part, this aggressive post- 
punk-influenced track would have fitted an 
album made up of songs like Bodysnatchers. 
Sadly for this track it wasn't where Radiohead 
were headed on In Rainbows. It has great live 
potential, though. 

4 MINUTE WARNING 

The booming introductory acoustics may 
have been out of character, but only a band 
with Radiohead's propensity for self-criticism 
could have ruled this beautiful, hymn-like 
melody to be below par. ■ robertsandall 


IN RAINBOWS Producer: Nigel Godrich | 
Recorded: February 2005 - June 2007; Hospital Studio, 
London; Halswell House, Somerset; Tottenham House, 
Wiltshire; Radiohead HQ, Oxford | Released: 10 October 
2007 (online), 31 December 2007 (in stores) 


Q 93 










































THE COMPLETE RADIOHEAD 


MISCELLANEOUS PROJECTS 

Side projects, solo outings and the best of what’s in the vaults. 


UNRELEASED TRACKS 


BIG BOOTS (AKA MAN-O-WAR) 

Written for The Bends and also considered 
for OK Computer. A clip of the band working 
on it features in 1998 tour documentary 
Meeting People Is Easy. "We could never find 
the proper way into it," said Yorke. 

FOLLOW ME AROUND 

Prescient, pre-Iraq dig at the British 
government: "Did you lie to us, Tony?/We 
thought you were different". Featured briefly 
in Meeting People Is Easy and aired on 
subsequent tours. 

GOOD MORNING MR MAGPIE/ 

MORNIN'M'LUD 

Strident acoustic track, as performed by a 
solo Thom Yorke during the Radiohead TV 
webcast of December 2002. 

1 FROZE UP 

Premiered during the Radiohead TV webcast. 
Stark, electric piano-led lullaby that uses 
the modern world as a metaphor for a 
crumbling relationship ("You're the light 
wiping out my batteries..."). 

LIFT 

OK Computer-era ballad that offsets its 
claustrophobic lyrical theme of being trapped 
in an elevator with a spacey emptiness. 

RECKONER (AKA FEELING PULLED 

APART BY HORSES) 

Post-OK Computer rant dating from 2000 
(sample lyric: "Feeling pulled apart by horses/ 
Fobbed off with shite lame excuses"). A later 
second half eventually became the In 
Rainbows track Reckoner. 

SPOOKS 

Short instrumental aired during their 2006 
world tour. Sounds like the theme to a spy film, 
hence the title. 

TRUE LOVE WAITS 

Atypically tender Thom York solo acoustic 
showcase only available on 2001 live album 
I Might Be Wrong. Revived during 2006 
tour, with Yorke transferring from guitar 
to synthesizer. 


BODYSONG 

Jonny 

Greenwood 

[PARLOPHONE, 2003] 

Fittingly 



COLLABORATIONS 


EL PRESIDENT Drugstore 

Former Radiohead touring partners 
enlist Thom Yorke for a duet with 
Brazilian-born singer Isabel Monteiro 
set against the backdrop of 
revolution in South America. 

AVAILABLE ON: WHITE MAGIC FOR LOVERS 
(ROADRUNNER, 1998) 


im _ «*** ■ 

Jf -jI 


WISH YOU WERE HERE 

Sparklehorse 

US mavericks' cover of Pink Floyd 
chestnut, from skateboarding flick 
Lords Of Dogtown. Yorke adds 
backing vocals, recorded down a phone line. 

AVAILABLE ON: LORDS OF DOGTOWN (GEFFEN, 2004) 


gr 

stersTlfrcPnef 


RABBIT IN YOUR HEADLIGHTS UNKLE 

Eerie, Yorke-fronted highlight of patchy 
debut album from DJ Shadow and James 
Lavelle's vanity project, and an early pointer 
to his burgeoning interest in electronic music. 

AVAILABLE ON: PSYENCE FICTION (MO'WAX, 1998) 

2HB/LADYTR0N/BITTER-SWEET/ 

BABY'S ON FIRE/TUMBLING DOWN 

Venus In Furs 

Faux-glam supergroup - featuring Yorke, Jonny 
Greenwood, Bernard Butler and Roxy Music 
saxophonist Andy Mackay - cover two Roxy 
songs, and tracks by Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno and 
Steve Harley for the Velvet Goldmine movie. 

AVAILABLE ON: VELVET GOLDMINE (FONTANA, 1998) 

I'VE SEEN IT ALL Bjork 

Stark duet between Bjork and Yorke, taken 
from the soundtrack to director Lars Von 
Trier's harrowing Dancer In The Dark. Bagged 
an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. 

AVAILABLE ON: SELMASONGS (ONE LITTLE INDIAN, 2000) 

THIS MESS WE'RE IN PJ Harvey 

Harvey and Yorke are lovers adrift in the alien 
landscape of Manhattan. Yorke adds backing 
vocals to One Line and Beautiful Feeling too. 

AVAILABLE ON: STORIES FROM THE CITY, STORIES FROM THE SEA 
(ISLAND, 2000) 

DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS? 

Band Aid 20 

Anaemic, Nigel Godrich-produced update of 


The Weird Sistei^T (frcImTeft) 

Phil Selway, Steve Mackey, Jarvis 
Cocker and Jonhy GreenumnH 


the daddy of all charity singles, featuring 
Jonny Greenwood and a piano-playing Thom 
Yorke alongside members of The Darkness. 

AVAILABLE ON: DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS? 

(MERCURY SINGLE, 2004) 



exploratory soundtrack to 
director Simon Pummell's 
documentary about the 
human body. Electronics, 
strings, horns and, on a 
handful of tracks, brother 
Colin all add to the sense of 
controlled experimentalism. 


THE ERASER 

Thom Yorke 

[XL, 2006] 

Yorke's debut 
solo album: 
an outlet for his more 
experimental urges during 
the In Rainbows sessions. 
Finds our hero in full "prophet 
of doom" mode, predicting 
environmental apocalypse 
and the end of the world 
in general. 



THERE WILL 

BE BLOOD 

Jonny 
Greenwood 

[NONESUCH, 2007] 

Soundtrack to Daniel Day 
Lewis film. Came about after 
director Paul Thomas 
Anderson heard Greenwood's 
Popcorn Superhet Receiver. 
Nominated for an Oscar, only 
to be disqualified for featuring 
a track from Bodysong. 


PLATFORM BLUES/BILLIE Pavement 

Jonny Greenwood adds harmonica to two 
tracks on Godrich-produced swansong album 
from wonky US indie-rock stalwarts. 

AVAILABLE ON: TERROR TWILIGHT (MATADOR, 1999) 

HIROSHIMA Bryan Ferry 

Greenwood adds apocalyptic guitar to stand¬ 
out track from Ferry's 2002 album, Frantic. 

AVAILABLE ON: FRANTIC (VIRGIN, 2002) 

1000 MIRRORS Asian Dub Foundation 

Ed O'Brien hooks up with London agit- 
rappers ADF and guest vocalist Sinead 
O'Connor for a tale of domestic violence. 

AVAILABLE ON: ENEMY OF MY ENEMY (FFRR, 2003) 

DO THE HIPPOGRIFF/MAGIC WORKS/ 

THISISTHENIGHT The Weird Sisters 

Jonny Greenwood, Phil Selway and Pulp's 
Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey in fictional 
band from Harry Potter And The Goblet Of 
Fire. A hoot if their cameo is anything to go by. 

AVAILABLE ON: HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE 
(REPRISE, 2005) 

THE WHITE FLASH Modeselektor 

Yorke pushes the button marked 
"experimental" on collaboration with Berlin 
techno pranksters Modeselektor. 

AVAILABLE ON: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! (BPITCH CONTROL, 2007) 


Thom Yorke: 'The 
end of the world 
is nigh, etc.' 



94 Q